Lives Are For Living
by thesilversun
Summary: After being pushed out of the police following the events of the 456, Andy Davidson tries to build a new life for himself deep in the Welsh countryside. Tom McNair walked out off his old life after realising it wasn't what he needed. A chance meeting would take their lives in directions that they'd never expected & bring them love that they'd not thought they'd find. Andy/Tom.
1. Chapter 1

**Title** Lives Are For Living. (1/35)  
**Fandoms** Torchwood/Being Human crossover fic.  
**Characters/pairings** Andy Davidson/Tom McNair. Other Torchwood and Being Human characters will appear later on.  
**Word count:** This part 1250 (From predicted total of 65,000)  
**Rating** This part PG (adult over all)  
**Contains** Mentions of depression/anxiety. Mentions of past canon major character death. Mention of minor character death – not canon. In later parts canon level violence, sex, Andy's homophobic mother. Spoilers for Being Human (UK version) up to series 5 episode 3, and for Torchwood up to Children of Earth.  
**A/N**: Crossover with Being Human. Technically a CoE fix it as it's set in the same 'verse as Finding Ways To Smile Again (although that isn't apparent until about 2/3 the way through the story). Follows on from Break and Breakaway from Tom McNair's POV – which is where it breaks from Being Human canon.

**Summary**  
After being pushed out of the police force following the events of Children of Earth, Andy Davidson tries to build a new life for himself in the deep in the Welsh countryside.  
Following what happened with Larry, Tom McNair walked out off his old life after realising it wasn't what he needed.  
A chance meeting would take their lives in directions that they had never expected and bring them love that they'd not thought they'd find.

* * *

The countryside rolled away on either side of the landrover as Andy drove along the winding road that led up from Rhayader to the Elan Valley.

Central Wales on a late spring day with the sun shining and the wind scudding clouds overhead made the place seem far more idyllic than Andy knew the place to sometimes be. He'd first seen it three months earlier on a bitterly cold February day when he'd come to see what it was his Great Aunt Edith had left him. Although left wasn't quite the right term as she was still alive, if very frail. She'd wanted to make sure that the small hill farm she'd lived on all her life remained in the family and rather than risk leaving it in a will to someone who might sell it straight away.

The fact that there was no livestock left apart from half a dozen chickens that were currently living on a small holding in the next valley had helped Andy make his decision. He'd take on Cwm Elan Farm and try to make a new life for himself.

It had come as a lifeline at at time when he'd most needed it. The past two years had been horrendous and it was only now, isolated from the world and from Cardiff, somewhere Andy had once sworn he'd never leave, that he'd started to feel better about his life and the future.

Parking the battered old landrover in the cobbled yard in front of the farm house, Andy switched off the loud, juddering engine and listened to the quiet of the countryside around him. The distant bleat of a hill sheep, the twittering of a bird and the bubbling of the spring that ran out of the base of the cliff behind the farmhouse and down to join the river in the valley below.

Cwm Elan Farmhouse was a traditional Welsh longhouse and was, if he was honest, in its current state little more than a three roomed shed. Set with it back to a sheer rock face and flanked by two crumbling outbuildings and some rusted bits of corrugated iron that had probably once been a pigsty it was in it current state hardly a dream house.

The farmhouse's three rooms consisted of a bedroom, a sitting room that also contained an ancient range style cooker and a utility room that contained an equally ancient copper and mangle, a sink and a tin bath. He supposed that the small stone room that had once been a coal shed that opened into the utility room might also count – not that it could really be used for anything, it was damp, windowless and the ceiling was barely high enough for him to be stand up in it. And the less that was said about the outside toilet the better.

Despite its problems, Andy had finally found a kind of peace that had been missing from his life for for too long. From the moment the creatures Gwen had called weevils had brought carnage to the police station where he worked in Cardiff things had started to degenerate. Wary glances in his direction and whispers about his involvement with Gwen and Torchwood. Snide comments about how 'he'd been so lucky not gone into the briefing room a few minutes earlier or he might have been caught in the attack.' There's been no 'Bloody hell, are you alright, mate?' because he'd been the one to find most of the senior officers in the station shredded like so much meat as to nearly be unrecognisable. No, for him there had just been suspicion.

Getting out of the landrover, Andy began to unload the things he'd collected from the builders merchant earlier that morning. All too familiar thoughts still churned over in his mind, how that even after the weevil attack things might have been alright but for what happened next.

From the moment the bomb had blown Roald Dahl Plas to pieces things had never been the same. The world had stopped making sense. Andy paused, hands resting on a roll of waterproof fabric what was needed for the barn roof. Even now, more than a year since the day when he'd gone against orders to do what was right the memories were still fresh. The suspension, reinstatement and associated suspicion and isolation from his colleagues that followed still had the ability to leave a sick feeling in his stomach and his nerves on edge.

Closing his eyes, Andy took a few deep breaths until his heart no longer felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. It would be a long time, he thought, until he was able think about what had happened, how he'd effectively been thrown on the scrapheap, forced to take early retirement on supposedly on mental health grounds or face trial for misconduct and maybe even jail time. It had been no choice at all, he'd taken the money knowing that they were paying him off to be rid of what they saw as an embarrassment to the force.

Opening his eyes, Andy ran his hand through his hair, which was staring to curl and fizz over the tops of this ear now that he no longer kept it cut short. Today it was just him, a load of slates that needed removing from the barn roof and an awkward roll of material that needed tacking to the roof joists before the slates could be replaced.

Once the landrover was unloaded and the pile of garden rubbish that Andy had cleared from the around the barn the previous day was raked into a bonfire and lit, he turned his attention to getting to removing the slates.

The breeze dropped as the morning went on, the sun getting hotter as it rose high overhead. Sitting on the roof, a slowly growing pile of slates stacked on the wall top, Andy was confident that he would have this part of the job done by the end of the week.

He'd look at a few books and a blog written by a couple in Cumbria doing a similar kind of renovation, and Andy was fairly sure he'd got the basics of it. Take the old slates off, check the timbers for rot and replace if necessary, nail on the waterproof felt stuff and then put back the slates.

Simple if backbreaking work. He didn't mind that, in fact the harder the work the better. Going to bed tired but feeling like he'd really accomplished something had helped his mood since moving here.

It was just after midday and Andy was considering taking a break when he saw a young man walking across the fields towards the farmhouse. A hiker was Andy's first thought as he looked at the man's backpack with its tent roll strapped to the bottom of it and a couple of pans tied to the top. Yet the clothes didn't seem quite right, Andy noted as the man got closer. The vest and cargo shorts had seen better days, clean but worn out.

Setting aside the slate that he'd been trying to remove, Andy was surprised at how easily he fell back into police mode as he made a more thorough assessment. The man was young, late teens to early twenties at most. Five six to five eight tall, average build, short hair. He didn't appear to be armed or in a hurry to either get somewhere or away from anything.

Andy was still deciding whether he should call out to the man and ask him if he was lost when the man stopped at the edge of the farmyard and waved.


	2. Chapter 2

Spotting the old farmhouse had been a stroke of luck, Tom decided as he took the most direct route across the fields towards it. A farmer who would agree to let him camp on his land and maybe keep his stuff safe for a few days would be welcome with the full moon just two nights away.

It had been a couple of months since he'd walked out of Honolulu Heights and away from the only people he knew. It had been hard, especially the first week or so, getting use to sleeping outside again, of not having all the things that people with houses took for granted, like lighting, a roof that didn't leak and hot water when you wanted it.

It was easier in some ways though. For the first time in Tom's life he was able to do exactly as he pleased. The novelty of that though was starting to wear thin, the loneliness of having nobody to talk to or turn to for advice was rapidly beginning to outweigh the sense of freedom.

Reaching the edge of the farmyard, Tom noted the dilapidated state of it, the hope of being able to camp there fast disappearing. There was a man working on the roof of one of the old barns and Tom waved as he realised that he had been seen, and then called out, "I don't 'spose you know anywhere round here I could camp for a few nights. Somewhere cheap like?"

The man on the roof seemed to think for a moment before calling back, "I don't know, I've only been here a couple of weeks. If you're really stuck you can pitch you tent here for the night. You'd probably have more luck finding somewhere down in Rhayader. It's only a couple of miles and there's a youth hostel there."

Tom considered it for a moment. He really did need to find somewhere with a shop or two with the full moon so close he really needed to get a chicken. Either that or hope that he could catch a rabbit or two tonight. Staying at a youth hostel was out of the question. Too dangerous and too expensive, but they might be able to tell him where he could find a campsite. "What's the best way to..." Tom paused knowing he would mangle the pronunciation, before finishing, "...That place what you just said."

"Wait a minute," the man called back, climbing ungainly over the centre of the roof. "If you've got a map I'll show you."

"Thanks!" Tom shrugged off his pack, glad to be rid of its weight for a while, and started to look for his map. Technically it wasn't his map, he'd taken it from a library in Conwy where he'd spent a day avoiding torrential rain. It hadn't been borrowed in ages and as long as he gave it back in less than the three weeks that people could borrow the books for, Tom decided it wasn't like it was really stealing, it was just that he didn't have a library card.

The was a crash and a clattering of slate and stone falling to the ground, followed by a surprised yell, and Tom looked up to see the man he'd been talking to clinging awkwardly to the roof, one leg through a hole in the slates.

"Hang on!" Tom shouted, abandoning his pack and running to the wall at the edge of the farmyard. Scrambling over the crumbling stonework, he reached the barn as another slate crashed down on to the cobbled yard.

There was no way to help from the ground and Tom looked around quickly for a way up onto the roof. It took a couple of attempts to get up onto the wall at the end of the building where the slates had already been removed, and not for the first time Tom wished that he was just a little bit taller.

This close to the full moon Tom knew that he was a little stronger and more agile than usual. Not but much admittedly, but he hoped it would be enough as he carefully made his way along the edge of the roof.

"Are you stuck?" Tom asked as he reached the man. Who was, he realised, now he was up close, both taller and younger than he'd first assumed. Holding onto the top of the roof with one hand and holding out his other for the man to take, he added, "I'm Tom."

"Yes, and I'm Andy," Andy replied sounding worried, but not panicked by his situation, although he didn't let go of the roof to take Tom's hand.

Looking though a gap in the slates Tom could see part of the beam that had broken and trapped Andy's leg. The wood looked rotten and maybe a bit woodwormy as well and Tom decided that breaking it was probably the best option. "Right, you hold on there," Tom said pointing to a slightly higher section of roof than Andy was currently holding on to. "I'm going to break it."

"Break what?" Andy said sounding concerned as he tried to see what Tom had been looking at.

"The beam." Tom pulled a couple of the loose slates free to reveal more of the rotten beam and then climbed higher up on the roof so that he could stamp down on it using his full weight, so that he'd have the best chance of breaking it. "You ready?"

Andy gripped the roof tighter and closed his eyes. "Not really, no."

"Oh right." Hoping that the roof would continue to take their combined weight, Tom waited.

Eventually, when Tom hadn't done anything for a couple of minutes, Andy said, sounding rather annoyed and lot more anxious than he had before. "What are you waiting for?"

"You said you weren't ready," Tom said, confused about why he was being snapped at. "So I was waiting, weren't I?"

"Well I'm ready now."

"Okay." Still wondering he'd missed something important, Tom stamped down hard on the beam. It made a cracking noise but didn't give way. "I'll give it another go."

Andy nodded and closed his eyes, breathing speeding up as he gripped white knuckled to the roof.

The second stamp didn't break it, but Tom could see that it was working, and he was relieved that on his third attempt that it gave with a splintering groan, part of it clattering to the floor inside the barn.

Moving careful over to Andy, who was still hold on tightly to the roof, Tom held out his hand to him again. "You gonna to be alright climbin' down?"

Andy nodded and then held on tightly to Tom's hand while he carefully lifted his leg out of the hole in the roof. Only once they were at the other end of the roof where they could climb down to the ground did Andy let go. Tom scrambled down first, ready to help if Andy slipped again.

Sitting down on a pile of plastic sacks containing sand and cement next to the barn, Andy rolled up his trouser leg to get a better look at what damage had been done. Tom paused for a moment to look at the few scraps and scratches before deciding there didn't seem to be anything too much wrong. Andy still seemed a bit shaken up, so hoping he was doing the right thing, Tom said, "I'll get us some tea."

"If you're sure," Andy said, sounding doubtful as prodded the largest of the scratches.

"Nah, it ain't no trouble," Tom called back as he went to fetch his pack. "I could do with a brew and all."

This was definite one of those 'what would Annie do situation?' situations, Tom decided as he took a camping kettle out of his pack. Dividing situations into what would Annie dos where he needed to nice to people, what would dad do where he needed to fight or plan things, what would Nina do when you needed to be sensible and what would George do when it was about being clever had seemed to help with dealing with things when he felt like he was getting a little out of his depth. He supposed that he'd have eventually had ones for Alex and Hal, but he hadn't know Alex all that well, and Hal would have probably been about being weird, so it might not have been all that helpful after all.

"It really isn't that bad," Andy said, seeming to take Tom's silence as concern.

"Oh no, it's not that. I were just thinkin' about someone. She made the best cups of tea and always knew what to say." After filling the kettle with water from a bottle in his pack, he put it over the fire to boil. Annie had become somewhere between a big sister and a mum during the time they'd lived at Honolulu Heights and Tom didn't think there would ever be a day where he didn't miss her. "She were the best being nice to people."

"You're not doing that bad a job of it yourself," Andy said looking at the scratches on his leg and picking out a splinter. "Thank you."

"It were nothin'," Tom said sitting down next to him. "You were going to help me, so it were kinda my fault you near felt through the roof anyways."

"At least you were there." Andy shuddered. "If you hadn't who knows how long I'd have been up there."

"You working on this place by yourself then?" Tom asked looking round. The farm seemed like it needed a lot more work than could easily be managed by a person on their own.

Andy nodded and picked unsuccessfully at another splinter.

"'Ere let me have a go," Tom said, taking a penknife out of his pocket. "It's got some tweezers on here somewhere."

Andy gave a small hiss of pain as Tom quickly found the splinter and pulled it free. "It weren't that bad, were it?" Tom said flicking the offending splinter into the fire.

"I suppose not," Andy replied, rubbing his leg. "I feel rather stupid honestly."

"Could have happened to anyone." Tom took a rather battered first aid kit out of his pack and offered to Andy, grateful that his dad had taught him to always be prepared to look yourself. "So are you gonna be a farmer when its' done or are you just one of those people fix up houses and sell them, like the they have on the telly."

"Neither." Andy accepted it and started to clean up his leg. "I was thinking of opening it as a camp site. It's got a long way to go before it'll open, but if you need somewhere to camp for a night or two and you don't mind there being no hot water then you can stay here."

"You really mean it?" Tom smiled and poured hot water onto the teabags he'd put into mugs for them both. "'Cause that'd be great."


	3. Chapter 3

The tea wasn't too bad, although Andy suspected that the milk was getting to the point were it would soon have to be thrown away. Hot and too sweet compared to how he'd usually drink it, it did seem to help calm his nerves a little. The fact that Tom seemed completely unfazed by needing to rescue him and was apparently more prepared than a boyscout for dealing things, helped too. Once he knew he would have probably been able to think of something witty to say, but he was out of practice with talking to people who weren't questioning about his every moved or trying to fix him.

Sitting next to Tom, Andy could see three thick, raised lines of scar tissue that were plainly visible through his short cropped, dark hair. They looked, Andy thought, like huge claw marks. But whether he was projecting his own experience with weevils onto it he wasn't sure. Realising that he'd been staring too intently for just a little too long, he quickly looked down at the ornate cross picked out in dark ink on Tom's calf, and said "That's a nice tattoo."

"This?" Tom pulled the leg of his cargo shorts up to his knee so that Andy could see the rest of it. "I got this done for me eighteenth. Me dad saved up for it." He smiled brightly for a moment and then it faded. "I were going to get another one done for me twenty first, but..." he stopped and shrugged.

Way to go, Andy thought bitterly, upset the only person who's been nice to you recently. Is it any wonder nobody wants to know you any more? "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

"Nah, it's okay. I just forgot, that's all." Tom got up and turned away rubbing at his eyes as he did. "I wouldn't have wanted to get it wiv out m'dad anyways."

Something painful twisted in Andy's chest as he saw the stiff set of Tom's shoulders. Standing up, Andy felt a slight twinge of pain from his scratched leg, but nothing too bad, and then, hoping that he was doing the right thing, put his hand on Tom's arm. "How long ago did you lose him?" Andy asked carefully, falling back on his police training for dealing with people.

Tom sniffed loudly and rubbed his eyes again. "I'll be a year in a few weeks."

It had been a few years since Andy had lost his own father and he knew all too well how grief could ambush you at the oddest of times. He wondered if he should try the 'time heals all' routine, but he couldn't bring himself to do it, not when he wasn't sure that it was even true any more. And telling him just to cheer up was too thoughtless – he'd had enough of people trying that with him when he'd felt like he life was falling apart after his suspension from the police. Instead he just said, "You want to go for a drink?"

X-X-X-X

It took a little longer than the half hour or so Andy thought it would take to walk down into Cwm Elan village, but the weather was fine and his leg felt reasonably okay.

The Red Dragon pub in the centre of the village was small and traditional, with low beams that meant he had to duck every time he went through a door. Andy knew that it was mostly an air it carefully maintained act to attract the hikers and cyclists who stopped of there on their way to walk and ride around the hills and lakes.

After two and a half pints, Andy realised that Tom was definitely getting rather tipsy. Funny and affectionate, but apparently failing to realise that was being either, Andy couldn't find it in himself to object as Tom leant against his shoulder and told him awkward customers in a cafe he'd once worked at.

All in all, Andy thought, as he watched him talk, drink and crunch his way through a packet of crisps, Tom was actually rather adorable. It had been a long time since he'd felt this relaxed around anybody or had anybody to talk with. The fact that Tom knew nothing of his past, didn't look at him with suspicion or constantly ask him how he was made Andy hate the fact that he was going to have to tell Tom that they'd probably better stop after their current drinks or it would be an interesting walk back to the farm.

Wondering if he should suggest that they get soft drinks for the next round, and hoping to keep the conversation going for a little bit longer, Andy said, "So your camping trip, where are you planning on going next?"

Tom frowned and then said, "I dunno. Just wherever I want I 'spose. Not like I've got to be anywhere and no ones waiting for me."

Either Tom was astonishingly innocent or just didn't care about what happened to him, Andy though concerned about was really going on in Tom's head. Going out and potentially getting drunk with somebody you didn't know and telling them that no one knew where you were and no one would miss you if you went missing was, Andy decided, as saddening as it was dangerous. Tom was the sort of young man that all too often fell through the cracks in society, the cruel and uncaring of the world using them for their own gain before either leaving them broken and destitute or occasionally dead.

Tom had fallen silent and Andy wondered for a moment if perhaps he'd had too much to drink. Not that what they'd was a lot, but he got the impression that Tom very rarely drank and they hadn't had anything to eat yet to help soak it up. Tom looked sad though rather than sick, but Andy thought he'd better ask, just in case. "Are you alright?"

"Jus' thinkin'" Tom closed his eyes and leant back against the wall behind his seat. "About m'dad."

"They say it helps to remember the good times," Andy said, rather at a loss what to say as he didn't want to make the situation worse.

"I do remember the good bits," Tom said, sounding confused about why anyone would think he wouldn't. "It's the bad bits, like how I found him, that I don't wanna remember."

Tom looked more in need of a hug than just about anyone Andy had seen, so he carefully put an arm around him. When Tom didn't pull away, he said, "That's awful. Had he been ill or..." Andy stopped. He wasn't a policeman on duty carrying out an investigation, he was just a bloke in the pub who was trying to help somebody who really needed a friend.

"I'd gone out for the night, stuff I had to do..." Tom trailed off, then picking up his pint, gulped what was left of it. "The house didn't feel right when I got back. And I found just lying there on the floor, blood everywhere."

Any idea that Andy might have had about Tom's late, and obviously much missed father having expired quietly in front of the telly died before it was fully realised. The quiet, matter of fact tone laced through with despair with which he said it, Andy found heartbreaking, and his own voice wasn't quite steady when he said, "Are you going to be okay?"

Tom sniffed and nodded. "I 'spose. Me dad would've wanted me to be."

It wasn't all that convincing an answer, but it was better in Andy's opinion than an outright lie like 'of course I am.' Hoping that he wouldn't regret it and that it wouldn't cause further upset, Andy said, "Do you want to talk about it or anything?"

Looking down, Tom picked at the edge of a beermat, scraps of paper falling onto the floor."Nah, not much to tell."

Tom lies so badly that under different circumstances, Andy thinks, it might even be funny. Now it just worries him, not because he thinks that Tom could be dangerous or had anything to do with the death, but that perhaps the reason he's wandering the countryside with no place to go is because he's in danger.

"Anyway," Tom continued. "I don't really know yer, so I probably shouldn't be tellin' you all this stuff. Yer be thinking I'm right wet."

"Sometimes it's easier to tell someone who doesn't know you and won't judge you." The words, which were tied up with too many of his own insecurities were out before Andy could stop himself.  
Talking to people who knew him, especially about things that would change their perception of him had never been something he'd found easy.

A lot of the time Gwen had been one of the few people he'd really been able to turn to. But since the mess he'd made of supporting Gwen when she'd gone to see Ianto's sister, she'd become rather more distant with him. He'd been trying to spare her the kind of things a grief stricken family might say upon the shock revelation that their dearly departed was gay. He knew how his own mother would have reacted. It was one of the reasons why still hadn't come out to the world and admitted that he found both men and women attractive. Between his family's attitudes and the already difficult situation at work, he'd felt like admitting it would cause his world to fall apart even more than it already had.

There were a few men in Cardiff who knew and who'd spent a hopefully memorable night with him,but other than that it was a life lived in secret. Because his choices, as he was them, was either being cut off from his family because of their intolerance or a life secrecy and denial about his own sexuality. They were both no win situations where he knew he'd miserable no matter what choice he made.

He wished he'd told Gwen before everything fell apart. Part of him knew that the distance was because Gwen had so much crap going on in her life with the disintegration of Torchwood and a young baby to deal with, but after months of suspicion and being blanked by colleagues he'd worked with for years, he couldn't silence the idea that it was all his fault, that it was him that was the problem, that he just made everything worse. Just like you did with Nikki Bevan, he thought bitterly. He still didn't know what had happened, just that afterwards she told him never to contact her again.

Tom prodded his shoulder and Andy blinked, suddenly realising that Tom had been speaking to him. Trying to concentrate on something other than the anxiety that was trying to claw at him in a way he'd not let it in some time, he said, "Sorry I didn't quite catch that."

"I said are you okay? Only you was staring off, like you wasn't really here." Tom looked at him, a worried frown on his face. "Perhaps you've had enough." He nodded towards Andy's drink.

Andy wanted to snap at him. To tell him no, he not alright and it's not down to having a couple of pints. It's because he's lonely and his life feels completely out of control and nothing that he can do make it any better, and Tom being there and reminding him of just how much he missed just having friends was making it worse. Tom didn't deserve that though, there was nothing about him that didn't seem to be nice and caring. So Andy nodded. "It been a long day, so I think we should head back. I can get us something to eat if you like."

There was a flicker of something in Tom's eyes that suggested that he realised that Andy wasn't being entirely truthful, but he just smiled and said, "Okay."

* * *

bAdditional notes:/b  
Tom's tattoo looks like this. . /the_silver_sun/12488175/75676/75676_ Screen cap is from the end of the first episode Tom appeared in, BH 3x01 Lia.

The Red Dragon pub in Cwm Elan is fictional. There doesn't appear to be a pub in the village as far as I can tell from maps and google street view.

From Andy's POV at this point he believes what happened in Children of Earth is what actually happened regards Ianto. The Ianto, Jack, Doctor storyline from Finding Ways to Smile Again is happening rough parallel timewise to this.

The situation with Nikki Bevan (Jonah Bevan's mum in Adrift) is based off a much older short fic I wrote for lj user= "writerinadrawer" back in 2008. And can be found here: . #cutid1

TBC - next part on Wednesday 14/8


	4. Chapter 4

It was a nice time of day to be walking, Tom thought as they started back towards the farm, all golden sunlight and light breezes off the hills that rose steeply around them. Beside him Andy was quiet. Lost in thought, Tom decided. He'd seen Annie get that look when she'd been remembering George, Nina and Mitchell or her old life in Bristol. It made him wonder who or where Andy was missing.

He knew people would be surprised that he'd noticed at all. People, especially normal human people always tended to assume he was a bit thick, like the manageress at the hotel. In some things, like book learning or social skills, Tom knew he was less than clued up and it was that that had allowed Kirby, Cutler and Larry to play him for a fool. Kirby had been malicious ghost and Cutler had been a vampire, but Larry had been a werewolf like him and that was why he suspected it had hurt so much.

All the lies Larry had fed him about the wolf, about what it did to you, about how it made you stupid and a failure, didn't hold up, not when he really thought about it. How could it be the wolf making him stupid? George had been smart despite the wolf? Nina had been a doctor both before and after she'd been changed, so smart and a success. And then there was Allison. He smiled, Allison had been brilliant, smart and funny and everything that he'd believed he was waiting for to find love. His smile faded. She wouldn't have stayed that way if she'd stayed with him. What happened afterwards with Annie and Eve, and with Hal and with Alex and Cutler and the Old Ones, she would have tried to fight or to understand and it would have killed her. Either actually dead or at least the brilliant, loving part that wanted to change the world for the better for everyone.

It had been for the best letting Allison leave, he told himself. He hoped she'd manage to get through university and become a barrister like she'd wanted. The world needed more people like her in Tom's opinion. The fact that he secretly had a thing for women dressed as judges or barristers was another. It was something that he probably wouldn't admit to anyone, rather like the feelings that he'd found he had towards Hal after they'd pretended to be a couple when Eve needed to see a doctor. It had been awkward, not so much because Hal was another bloke, but Hal was a vampire and after being brought up to stick pointy pieces of wood into them it was quite a thing to start wondering what it would be like not to just pretend to be a couple.

They got back to the farm with almost no conversation passing between, but Andy seemed happier as he let them back into the farmyard, tension dropping from him as he walked over the cobbles to the farmhouse.

There wasn't much to the farmhouse as far as Tom could see. Just a kitchen-living room with a couple of doors off it, which he supposed had to be a bedroom and a bathroom or maybe a kitchen. It seemed lived in though. Bookcases with a mixture of sci-fi, fantasy and non-fiction books, were pushed into a couple of the corners, while a table and chairs and a sofa filled a lot of the other floor space.

Going over to the range cooker that occupied one corner of the kitchen-living room, Andy opened the hatch to check the fire. "Oh well that's just brilliant."

"Has it gone out?" Tom asked. The wood fired cooker was like nothing that he'd used before, but he'd had enough experience of lighting camp fires that he knows he should be able to getting going with minimal difficulty. "Do you want me to have a go at getting it going again?"

Andy seemed to think for a moment, then said, "You can have a go, but it's temperamental thing. I should probably get it replaced."

"Nah, I think it's got character." Tom looked at the pipe leading into the wall. "Have you had the chimney swept?"

"Not yet. I was going to do it myself, eventually. It just didn't seem that important, not like getting the roof done." Andy tapped the pipe. "Do you really think it'll make much of a difference."

"Might do, depends how long it's been since anyone did it." Tom looked at the pile of wood and old pieces of newspaper in a bucket next to the fire. It probably weren't polite to ask if Andy had been lighting it properly, so he said, "I should be able to get it going though."

Andy looked at the pile of sticks and paper Tom was sorting through, trying to find the smallest pieces. "You were a boyscout, weren't you?"

Tom hesitated, wondering whether to tell the truth that he'd hadn't done any of the usual things kid did growing up or whether that would raise more questions that he'd find it difficult to answer. He realised his expression must have looked blank as Andy said, "You know woggles, dib dib dob and helping old ladies with their shopping."

Tom shook his head. His somewhat limited knowledge of what scouts were came from some comments Hal had made and honestly he wasn't entirely sure about how it all worked. "No, I just used to do a lot of camping with me dad." Tom snapped some of the smaller sticks into kindling and arranged it on top of the crunched up paper. "Well when we weren't in the van."

"I thought about getting a camper van, before I got this place" Andy said, getting some tins out of a cupboard. "Freedom of the open road and all that."

"They're alright." Tom held a match to the paper and watched the edges blacken before catching fire. "But they ain't much fun in the winter. You're better of with a house."

Putting the tins down on the table he looked curiously at Tom. "You actually lived in a van?"

"Yeah well mostly. I lived in this old hotel for a bit after dad." He added a few more sticks to the fire making sure they caught light before adding anything larger. "It were nice there by the sea, having a job like a normal person."

The look Andy gave him was somewhere between confusion and pity, and Tom suddenly felt very defensive of his past. Of course Andy wouldn't understand, he was just an ordinary person. This was why his dad had kept them hidden, kept them moving. Vamps might use you or even kill you, but it was normal people if they found out, if they told the world, who could really destroy you.

Andy seemed as if he was going to ask another question, then he shrugged and opened a drawer in the welsh dresser opposite the range. Getting out a tin opener, he said, "You don't mind if it's just eggs, chips and beans, do you?"

"Course not." Tom looked at the fire that was starting to burn brightly, the smaller pieces of wood alight enough to catch the couple of larger logs he'd put on top. "Is there anything else you want me to do?"

"You could do the potatoes," Andy said, then almost immediately shook his head. "You don't have to though. I mean you're a guest. My mam would never let me hear the last of it if she knew."

"Why?" Tom asked as he went over to the veg rack which had been pushed into a gap between the dresser and a bookcase. Taking out a few potatoes, he said, "You're giving me free grub, it'd be rude not to help. It's like holding doors open or ladies and old people or how you shouldn't steal from honest hard working folk."

"Really?" Andy said skeptically.

"Yeah, me dad was full of good advice," Tom replied as he started to cut up the potatoes. "He always knew what to do." He wondered what his dad would have thought about him setting out on his own or pitching up at the farm for a few nights. He hoped he would have been alright with it, especially as he was still trying to do what he'd wanted, to have a normal life. He'd only killed two vampires since leaving Honolulu Heights and compared to what life had been when his dad had still been alive it was almost like not fighting at all. Admittedly his dad had thought that he'd been leaving him at the hotel with George and Nina and Annie, the closest thing to fictional pack that his dad had invented when he'd been a kid to try and make their life more bearable.

Finding out all the stuff he'd believed about the pack, about what had happened to his mum and how he'd been born a werewolf was a lie and that his dad wasn't even really his dad had hurt like nothing else he'd known. Even the transformation in all it's bone-breaking awfulness was easier to deal with than that. They'd got through it in the end though and he would always think of Anthony McNair as his dad regardless of what had happened.

"I think those are small enough."

Tom looked down at the potato he'd been slicing. The chips were on the thin and decidedly wonky side, but not a complete loss. "At least they'll cook quick," he said scooping them up and dropping them into a pan on the top of the range.

"There is that," Andy replied, seeming amused rather annoyed at his lack of concentration.

With the chips frying in the pan and the beans beginning to bubble in another, Tom glanced round at Andy who was clearing plans, paperwork, DIY odds and ends and the cup and plate left over from breakfast from the table. Andy seemed like a good bloke. Not all lying flattery like Larry or Kirby had been or even full of slick half truths like Cutler, just interested in him and maybe a bit lonely. He didn't seem like the sort to be working alone, doing stuff like taking slates of a roof, not that Tom was sure what sort of person would be likely to, but Andy seemed rather lacking in some of the practical skills that he would have thought were necessary.

Giving the beans a quick stir, Tom wondered if he should say anything, maybe suggest that he could help out for a bit in exchange for letting him camp there. It was tempting, but with the full moon the following night, he decided that it was probably best to get that out of the way before asking for anything.

TBC – next part on Sunday.

* * *

Notes.

Sorry for delay on this, I know I said Wednesday and it's Friday, but I was getting everything transferred to a new laptop. The next part which is nearly written will be up on Sunday.

For readers not familiar with Being Human, Tom backstory, as incredible, sad and occasionally ridiculous as it is, is his canon one. Including growing up living in a van in the woods, pretending to be Hal's boyfriend, the situation with Allison, having a thing for female barristers and repeating back his dad's often rather odd combinations of advice – such as 'Always be kind and polite and have the materials to make a bomb.'


	5. Chapter 5

Tom had left as the evening shadows had started to get longer, taking his pack and its rolled up tent out to where the fields met the woodland a few hundred metres from the side of the farmhouse.

Andy found it made the house seem strangely empty without him, despite the fact that Tom had only been there a couple of hours and was, with the exception of his Aunty Edith's solicitor, the only other person to have ever been in the house with him.

From his bedroom window Andy could just see the faint light of a torch or lantern as Tom finished sorting out his tent. It was dry and warm night, the near full moon lighting up the valley. It was, Andy thought, the perfect weather for sleeping out under the stars. Yet part of him wanted to go down to the tent and ask Tom to come back to the house. The other wanted to join Tom out there under the spreading beech trees, sit around a camp fire with a few bottles of beer and talk about nothing important until the sky started to brighten with the dawn, as he'd done with friends as a teenager.

Not that he'd seen any of them in years, those friendships had slowly drifted away after he joined the police. The awkwardness that people seemed to have being around a police officer spilling over into the times when he was of duty, conversations becoming generic, guarded and dull, until they had slipped away altogether. There was reason that for a lot of people in the police their friends also tended to be in the service as well or at least a closely connected one.

Turning over in bed, Andy looked up at the beams in the ceiling. He was tired, but he knew that there was no way that his mind was going to switch off just yet. Not wanting to think about his own life, or lack of it, Andy turned his attention back to Tom.

Tom who was definitely distracting and fascinating. Tom who seemed so nice and who maintained an almost painfully naïve sense of trust despite life having dealt him a spectacularly bad hand. Growing up in a van with only his dad, moving from one place to another with nowhere to really call home and no friends or family to turn to when his father was murdered. And now he was homeless and jobless with nobody in the world who apparently cared about him or missed him.

Andy rolled over again just in time to see the faint light by Tom's tent go out. Sighing, he got out of bed and went back through to the living room and sat down at the table. He couldn't let Tom go without at least trying to help him.

Employing somebody to help him renovate the farm and turn it into a campsite had been something he'd considered, but having a group of builders there or haggling with contractors wasn't something that he'd felt ready to do. Tom was different though, employing him to do a few odd jobs for a few hours a week until he sorted himself out somewhere to live and maybe a full time job seemed like it would be something that would be good for both of them.

The settlement or more accurately bribe, he thought bitterly, that he'd been given for leaving the police had been very generous, a pension and cash lump sum as if he'd completed a police officer's standard thirty year service, rather than the ten years that he actually had. With the farm being his outright, and with no mains gas or electricity to pay and the water coming from a spring there was only food, council tax and the associated costs of keeping the landrover on the road. He could live on it for a long time as long as he wasn't too extravagant with it.

A lot of the lump sum was set aside for jobs that Andy couldn't do himself, like having a new septic tank fitted for the toilet, more toilets for people camping there, solar panels for the house and when it was finished the barn as well, a new back-up generator for when it was wasn't sunny enough for them to work and the costs of paying contractors to fit it all. It would all be money well spent though or at least it would be spent once he actually got the farm to a stage where he could get it all fitted.

With so much of the money already allocated he knew he couldn't afford to employ Tom full time, but something like twenty hours a week, plus free camping and free food he hoped would be enough to tempt him to stay for a while. Tom's lack of address meant that him having a bank account was unlikely, so it would have to be cash in hand. Not strictly legal, Andy knew, but after the couple of years he's had he's quite happy to ignore certain parts of it where it's not actually hurting anybody.

The worse that could happen was that Tom would take offence at being offered work like he was a charity case and leave. Andy would be no worse off than he already was if he did, but he knew it would be a very long time before he stopped worrying about Tom if he did.

The clock showed a quarter to three before Andy had finished looking through all his bank statements and costings paperwork for the renovation of the farm. Exhausted, but satisfied that he could afford to employ Tom for at least a couple of months, Andy finally went to bed.

x-x-x

The sun was only just above the horizon, the early morning sky still streaked with the colours of dawn, when Andy woke. Yawning and wondering if Tom had managed to get a better night's sleep in his tent, Andy when through to the living room.

After a couple of attempts at lighting the range which seemed even more resistant to his efforts to get a fire burning than usual, Andy gave up and lit the camping stove. Coffee made him feel slightly more awake and after a couple of cups of it and some breakfast, Andy decided it was now late enough to go and see if Tom was awake.

Tom's tent was pitched in slight hollow at edge of the small wood that bordered the edge of the farm, the branches of the trees spreading out above it. The tent looked like it had seen better days, the material faded and most of the seams repaired with gaffer tape, but Andy suspected that it was still waterproof as Tom had seemed quite capable to when it came to practical tasks.

Dressed in the same rather tatty shorts and vest that he'd been wearing the previous day, Tom was sitting on a tree stump, his back to him, while he warmed his by a small fire. The fire was burning brightly in a carefully dug and stone edged shallow pit, his battered camping kettle and mess tin style pan apparently full of porridge carefully propped over the flames.

"Mornin'" Tom said standing up, not seeming startle at all that Andy had walked up behind him. "Hope you don't mind me using bits of wood out of there." He gestured to the woodland. "There's a fair old bit of fallen stuff in there that if you get it cut up proper and stacked to dry it'd be right good on that fire up at the house."

"I've not even looked in there," Andy said truthfully. It was enough work getting the farm sorted out without having to think about woodland management or whatever it was called. "Take whatever you need out of there, "

"Thanks. You really sure you don't mind though?" He asked, concern edging into his voice. "Only I don't want you be short come winter. I mean you could probably sell some of the stuff, like they do at garages sometimes in those string sacks, if you wanted to maybe get some coal instead."

Tom was far more practical and knowledgeable about the things that needed doing, Andy thought, than he could hope to be for until he'd spent at least a year on the farm, probably making a complete idiot of himself half the time because he hadn't got a clue what he was doing. Certain now that he was doing the right thing, Andy pushed ahead with this plan.

"Actually I've been thinking," Andy said hoping that he didn't end up sound too pushy or desperate, the last thing he wanted was to drive Tom away by being too weird. "It's a lot of work to get this old place turned into a camp site and yesterday made me realise that maybe working on it by myself isn't a good idea, and you did say that you weren't in a hurry to get anywhere. So would you be interested in working here? I could pay you for say twenty hours a week, plus free camping and food. I mean if you want to, that is."

Eager and earnest, Tom smiled as, without a pause, grabbed Andy's hand and shook his enthusiastically. "Course I do. Yer won't regret it. So what you need me to do?"

Relieved that Tom was staying, but still tired after only having a couple of hours sleep, Andy decided that he wasn't going to be working on the barn and risking making an idiot of himself though another mishap caused by a lapse of attention on his part just yet. Doing a few small jobs round the house and then going back to bed and trying to get more sleep sounded like the best plan. "No, I've got a few other things to go. Any way, you'll want to get your camping gear sorted out and maybe take a walk down to Rhayader to buy anything you need, as you won't really get a chance tomorrow."

"Do ya need me to work on Sunday then?"

"No, Monday will be fine," Andy replied, hearing the hesitation in Tom's voice. Tom didn't seem like the type to observe organised religion, but so much about Tom seem contradictory. Perhaps his family had been religious? Maybe that's why the tattoo was a cross rather than skulls or some so called tribal design. Thinking that his mother would be nodding her head in approval at the young man right now, he said, "There's a chapel down in Elan Village or a church in Rhayader. If you want to go."

Tom frowned and then said, "Do you think I should? I mean is that normal like round here?"

And there was that undefinable strangeness again, Andy thought. Why was Tom so concerned by trying to do what others would call normal? "I just thought that's why you didn't want to work on Sunday. It seemed like the most likely reason."

"No, it ain't like that," Tom started to put his trainers on. "It's just some there's some other stuff I really need to do, so I might be a bit late on Sunday morning, and I didn't want you thinkin' that I didn't want the job, 'cause I really do."

Andy decided it was none of his business what Tom needs to do, even if he was a little curious about what it might be, given what he'd said the previous day. "Okay, Monday it is then. If you need anything just come up to the house, like if you want cook or use the phone."

"Thanks." Tom smiled again like Andy's given him something amazing. "I bet this place'll be great when you get it all done up."

Andy looked out across the sunlit valley. "Do you know, I really think it will," he said, finding that for the first time he could really see himself living and working there rather than just surviving.

TBC. Next part Wednesday 21/8

* * *

Note.

The knowledge about how pensions are calculated comes from the job I do in real life, but for anyone interested the figures would be (in Andy's case) half of actual annual pay for the pension, plus three years worth of pay lump sum.


	6. Chapter 6

It was just over three miles from the farm to Rhayader, first down the winding farm track and then along a narrow country road, whose only traffic seemed to be cyclists and the occasional tractor or 4x4.  
Tom walked along happily enjoying the sights and scents of the countryside. His dad had always said that the few hours before the change were the best, when you had the sense of the wolf, when you could feel how it made you stronger. It was when they'd hunted vampires the most. Not that he was going to think about hunting vampires, he was supposed to be giving it up, he told himself, and being a normal person.

Having a job was part of being like a normal human. Not that all normal humans worked, but getting a job wasn't considered odd. It wasn't usual amongst the 'not quite human anymores' though. Admittedly it would be pretty hard for a ghost to get a job what with the whole not being able to be seen thing, Tom thought. Vampires sometimes did, but just so they could get into positions of power like Herrick had done in the police or Cutler had as a lawyer so they could manipulate people, so he wasn't sure if that counted. Nina and George who'd had jobs had been the exception for werewolves. Most, as far as Tom could tell, lived as he and his dad had – living rough and just trying to get by and dodging vampires who wanted to catch you, sling you in a cage and make you fight somebody for their entertainment.

He looked back at where the farm was now hidden amongst the rolling hills and smiled. He was well out of that old life now and things were definitely looking up.

Rhayader proved to be town built at a crossing on the river Wye, full of old buildings, narrow streets and places that catered to tourists. Which was great if you wanted to buy a souvenir tea towel, a decorative spoon or some over priced fudge in a box whose lid could be used as postcard. Not so much use if you wanted to steal a chicken.

Not that Tom particularly liked stealing, but most of the time it had been the only way him and his dad had had enough to eat. The lack of a large supermarket or other big store was definitely a problem, Tom thought as he made his way through the small market town, as he couldn't afford to buy a piece of meat big enough to use to make decent a scent trail, and his dad had told him never to steal from family businesses no matter how much you needed something. The reason had mostly been because it wasn't fair, but it had also been because you ran a bigger risk of getting caught in a small shop. There wasn't any time to catch anything now either, so although he didn't really like the idea of transforming in a new area without having set a trail first, he knew how to minimize the risk. The hills and reservoirs high above the farms and village was remote enough that he could do it without running into anybody.

It wasn't any fun being completely skint, Tom thought, as he looked at things in the shops. Not that there was too much he really needed, but it would be nice to be able to get a few extras sometimes. There'd be time for that though after he got paid, he told himself. So after using the last of the money he had left for some bits and pieces he couldn't really do without, like soap, toothpaste, matches and something to eat on the way back, he set off for the farm.

The scent of a vampire took him by surprise as he turned the corner past the post office. Senses sharp with moonrise just a few hours away he knew that the vampire hadn't been there in last couple of hours, but it had definitely passed by that spot within the last twelve hours or so.

Tom scowled. He didn't like to think that there were vamps in the area. It was a nice, quiet little town, where families went on holiday and Andy came to shop. Having vampires wandering about the place wasn't, Tom though, acceptable. Wishing that he had thought to bring a stake with him, but knowing that he was able to improvise if necessary, he started to follow the trail.

The scent wasn't of a vampire he recognised. There were a few he knew he'd know instantly, like Hal or Herrick or Cutler. Herrick and Cutler were dead though and the scent definitely wasn't Hal's. Not that he'd be worried if it was Hal's, well apart worrying why Hal was out here, if Hal was following him. Hal had been an alright bloke and had been about as good as vamp got, providing he didn't feed. He hoped that Hal continued to be his oddly obsessive domino stacking self who'd stayed off the blood for fifty years. He really didn't want to be the one to have to stake him one day.

The trail was faint, blurred with the movement of other people, but Tom followed it through Rhayader until it finally stopped at the edge of town in a pub car park. There was another scent in the car park where the vampire trail ended, something odd and unfamiliar. Rank and acrid with just the hint of sewers, it was unsettling as he couldn't think what could have produced it, all he could tell was that it had been alive. The vamp, whoever he was, Tom was sure from the scent it was a he, had got a car or van with something unknown and smelly and driven away. It wasn't the most satisfying end to the search, as despise his dad wanting him to give up hunting vamps, part of him still felt that a search for a vampire should really end with it being a pile of dust on the end of his stake.

There wasn't any way to continue the search, so Tom sat down on a low wall by the side of the river Wye opposite the pub to eat the pie he'd bought earlier. There wasn't going to enough time to stop off at the farm now before he changed, not if he wanted to find somewhere safe and isolated to do it, Tom thought sadly. He hoped that Andy wouldn't be too annoyed about him not showing up for whatever he'd cooked for their evening meal.

With one last look back at the car park and its odd smell, Tom started walking along the footpath at the side of the one a stream that flowed into the Wye, following it up to where it rose in the hills.

Evening sunlight sparkled on the deep, clear waters of the Gerreg Ddu and Caban Coch reservoirs as Tom crossed the narrow strip of land between them. The long, winding curve of them followed a natural depression in the hills provided a natural barrier with Rhayader, Elan village and the scattered outlying farms on one side and the open moorland on the other.

With moonrise less than an hour away he was aware of every creature around him, rabbits on the edges of the fields, birds in the trees and a fox slinking through the undergrowth. While more distant there was the smell of sheep in the high pastures, the faint scent of horses where a pony trekking group has passed through earlier in the day and the smoky tang of camp fires and disposable barbecues at camp site.

As the sun grew lower on the horizon Tom left the footpath moved deeper into the woods. He could feel the shift starting, an ache deep in his bones growing, his muscles twitching and cramping. He could take it for now, just a soft gasp escaping him at each surge of pain. His dad had taught him how to bear it, not that he was as good at it as him, his dad had been able to keep nearly silent until partially transformed.

That was the worse bit of the change really, Tom thought, closing his eyes and flexing his shoulders, the part where you still had enough awareness to register and remember the pain. The worse part over all though had to be not knowing what you did while you had the wolf on. Not that he particularly wanted to have the memories of eating raw chicken or whatever bones and all, but he was sure it would be worth it to know that he'd not hurt anyone, not turned anyone or worse. Killing and eating somebody, maybe even somebody you knew was just about the worse nightmare every wolf had. It was why most ran from their families, terrified that they'd accidentally hurt them.

Sitting down in a wooded hollow, screened on all sided by tangles of vegetation, Tom stripped off his clothes and shoved them into his shopping bag. With any luck he'd not be too far away from there when the wolf left. A long naked hike back to your clothes was never fun.

The pain was fiercer now and he laid down on the ground, eyes squeezed tight shut, hands clenched into fists. Gasping and shaking, Tom eventually cried out as his bones cracked, the transformation lengthening or shrinking them as needed, changing his shape into something no longer human. Eyes once brown and friendly became fierce and golden, teeth and jaws grew longer, and coarse, shaggy black hair sprouted across his whole body.

Transformation complete, the werewolf rose up on his rear legs, looked at the moon with baleful eyes and howled.


	7. Chapter 7

The sun hadn't long set and a brilliant full moon hung in the dusk sky over the Elan Valley. It would be another warm night, Andy thought as he watched a barn owl fly low and silent across the fields.

There was still no sign of Tom, but it was nothing to worry about, Andy told himself. As although he couldn't think what he could have found to keep himself occupied in Rhayader for so long, Tom was a young man and it was Saturday night. So in all likelihood he was probably in a pub, watching football on the telly there and maybe talking to the bar staff to find out what the night life was like there.

It'd been a long time since Andy had gone on a night out. He'd never really been one for drinking alone, and with his pool of friends to invite shrunk to just about nothing and his mood prior to moving away from Cardiff at rockbottom, he'd not really felt like it either.

With a sigh, he leant back against the wall by the door. Perhaps he should go down into Rhayader too or maybe arrange a trip to somewhere larger like Newport or Bristol and visit a few clubs. Not to Cardiff though, not for the sort of pubs and clubs he wanted to visit. He didn't feel able to run the risk of somebody he knew seeing him leave a gay club, preferable with company, and the information getting back to his mother. Certainly not since the last time, when he'd bottled out of telling her why he'd been there and instead lied to her, claiming that he'd working undercover for the police. Her response, asking him if he was going to help shut places like that down, had been enough that he'd decided not to risk going out in Cardiff like that again.

He sighed again. He was a grown man, he thought, he should be able to tell her, he should be able to face that fact that she would say some terrible, hurtful things and most likely tell him to go away and not come back. Fancying both men and woman could be the worse of both worlds sometimes. People told you 'why make yourself a target? Just stick to woman and you'll fit in' or 'you're just confused, it's only a phase, you'll grow out of'' or 'it's god's way of testing you, you have to resist temptation and do what's right.' It didn't help that when he'd tried to talk to a guy he'd attempted to date about it he'd been told that he was in denial about being gay and he'd be happier once he stopped trying to fool himself. Either that or they assumed that you must be some kind of commitment phobic nymphomaniac. It was all bollocks. Hurtful, damaging bollocks that had made him feel like failure and a freak.

All he wanted was to find somebody, regardless of gender, who loved him and who he loved back. Was that really so much to ask?

Andy was still considering what to do when long, mournful howl sounded across the valley. Realistically he knew it was some slobbery great mutt one of the holiday makers or hikers had brought with them, but there was something so eerie about it, so off that it made him shiver. Giving one last look towards Tom's tent, Andy went inside and locked the door behind him.

x-x-x

Andy heard the dog twice more during in the night, both times the distance, the eerie howl waking him from sleep.

Remembering Tom said that he got something to do that would keep him busy on Sunday morning, Andy waited until it was nearly lunch time before making his way down to Tom's tent.

The camp fire was burning again and as Andy approached he saw Tom lift the kettle off the fire and pour the into an old plastic half barrel, that had been stood on a tree stump. The barrel, which had been scavenged from somewhere, looked like it had once been used as a water trough for animals. And was now, after a quick clean, apparently about to be used to have a wash.

Without his vest on, Andy could see scars on Tom's back. Four thick, raised lines starting on his shoulders and finishing near his waist. It made him think of claw marks, of creatures terrible and vicious, their form nightmarish parody of humanity. Andy shuddered at the unwanted memories and wondered whether he'd have even thought of claws if he hadn't seen the kind of damage a weevil could do. It was doubtful Tom's scars had been caused by a weevil though. His albeit limited experience of them told him people didn't walk away from a fight with one.

The scars were old, faded silver-pink in the way that only the passage of time can manage. They matched the ones that snaked through Tom's hair. Whatever had happened it had been when Tom was smaller and younger. Not that Tom wasn't relatively small or young now, Andy thought looking at him; he was barely into his twenties and about five seven with his boots on.

Tom was lean, but not thin. Muscles from a life lived in almost constant activity reasonably well defined on his compact frame. He was also filthy, like he'd be sleeping in a ditch or rolling about in a ploughed field, and half naked, dressed in just his cargo shorts which hung low on his hips. Low enough, Andy realised, that he couldn't be wearing any underwear.

"You had a good night, then?" Andy asked realising he needed to say something, rather than just stare.

"Err...yeah." Tom gave him a rabbit caught in the headlights look before replying. "Nothin' much. I just like to...um... get back to nature. What's it they call it? Naturistism or somethin' like that."

The world took all sorts, Andy thought, trying hard not to blush or to think about it. Which of course meant that it was suddenly all he could think about. The light tan Tom had, as well as the grime, extended below the almost indecently low waist of his shorts. The shorts were baggy, but he had little doubt that the thighs beneath would be just as lean as the rest of him. All that walking with a heavy pack, they'd be well toned. Powerful. Andy swallowed hard, mouth dry. He was not going to think it, not going to let himself imagine it. Tom had shown no signs of being even remotely interested, he'd just be setting himself up for disappointment.

"You don't mind do yer?" Tom said, nodding towards the barrel. "Only you didn't seem to be using it for owt."

"No. No, of course not," Andy said relieved that Tom had either not noticed or at least was polite enough not to point out that he was doing a fine impression of the world tallest beetroot. "I just came to see if you wanted any breakfast."

"I've already had some, thanks, but if it'll keep til lunch I'll eat it then." Tom wandered back over to the barrel and grabbed a flannel and soap out of the water.

"I can get us some sandwiches for lunch. I thought..." Andy hurried turned away as Tom rubbed the now soapy cloth across his chest, trails of water running down to soak into the waistband of his short, threatening to drag them lower still. "Plans...I thought I could show you the plans for what we'll be doing in the buildings...with the buildings."

"Sounds great." There was another wet slopping noise as Tom dropped the soap back in the water. "D'ya want to wait while I wash up or shall I come up to the farm when I'm done?"

"Farm," Andy said hurriedly, then still not turning round, quickly walked back to the house. "See you later."

Despite the earlier awkwardness, lunch went better than Andy had hoped for, with Tom making no mention of his although whether it was him being polite or if he genuinely hadn't noticed he couldn't say for certain. Either way Tom chose to focus on giving suggestions about the plans and about how long certain jobs would take to complete.

"I used to read these when I was a kid," Tom said, running his thumb along books in one of the bookcases, while Andy put the farm plans away. "Spent hours in libraries while me dad were out hu...er working."

"All day?" Andy said before he could stop himself. "What about school?"

"I never went, did I. We moved round too much, me dad taught me all I needed to know. Any way it were only ever for a few hours an' I liked it." Tom smiled like the memories were happy ones. "D'ya mind if I borrow this one? I promise I'll give it back."

For a moment Andy couldn't answer, disturbed by the fact that somebody could apparently repeatedly abandon their child in a public place and nobody noticed or cared. Being home schooled wasn't common, but not unheard of. Choosing to home school and then just leaving the kid to fend for them self was negligent at best and abuse at worse. For all Tom seemed to adore his late father he didn't seem to have been a good parent as far as Andy was concerned. Not that he was about to point it out.

"I can just read it here at the house if you're worried it'll get mucked up out at the tent," Tom said, sounding a little more unsure of himself now.

"Borrow what want, I'm not reading any of those at the moment," Andy said, trying and failing to convince himself that perhaps Tom had been a teenager when his dad used to leave him alone in a library.

"Thanks." Tom picked out a copy of the first Lord of the Rings books. "I ain't read the third one, but it's been ages since I read the other ones, so I reckon I should start at the beginning again."

"Have you ever seen the films?" Andy asked sitting down on the sofa, glad of a safe topic of conversation.

"Nope." Tom flopped down on the sofa next to him, completely ignoring any concept of personal space. "So are they any good then?"

"Well they don't always exactly follow the books, but..." Andy began, launching into what his brothers had used to jokingly call the never ending film review of doom. It had been ages since he'd found someone to listen with the obvious interest that Tom had. It was, Andy thought, turning out to be a very good afternoon.

TBC. Next part on Wednesday.

* * *

NOTE  
Idea of Tom having read and presumably enjoyed these kinds of books comes from one of the episodes where he's naming his stakes things like Conan and Beowulf and Thor. Whether his dad really left him in libraries is unknown, but they didn't seem to have books in the van, and presumably he had to do something with Tom when he was kid while he did things like break into disused buildings to see what metal he could steal and sell as scrap.

Andy having these sorts of books is a bit of a guess, but he made a few sci-fi tv series references in the show, so for the purposes of this story he also reads that genre of books too.


	8. Chapter 8

Andy had been a bit weird when he'd found him getting cleaned up after spending the night as a wolf, Tom thought as he picked a likely looking piece of wood out of the pile he'd stacked at the side of his tent. Jumpy was probably the best description. It had almost been like he didn't want to be around him, which was odd, as most of the time since Andy seemed like he wanted to spend as much time with him as possible.

Sitting down with the piece of wood across his knees, Tom got out his penknife. It hadn't been fear, he was sure of that, so he doubted Andy had guessed he was a werewolf; he doubted normal people would even consider something like that in the first place. Since he'd been alright with him both before that and in the days that followed, Tom eventually come to the conclusion that it must have been something to do with him not be properly dressed and his scars. He didn't really think about them much himself, they been part of him since before he was old enough to remember, but people could be funny about things like that.

He was just glad that Andy hadn't asked anything about where he'd got them, thinking up a reason why he'd been so dirty had been hard enough. Andy seemed to have accepted the idea he went out to watch wildlife without any difficulty. He just hoped that he wouldn't ask to see pictures or anything.

Things were about as good as they got, Tom thought as he striped the bark from the piece of wood and then got to work on whittling a point on one end. His dad had always said that single branch stakes were better than pieces made from bits of old plank and the like. You could use things like that if you had to, if you'd been foolish enough to go out with anything to defend yourself with, but nothing killed vamps a good, well made stake. Not that he was planning on killing any vampires any time soon.

The odd scent in Rhayader had been more unsettling in a way than the vampire. He'd lived all his life with the senses of a werewolf and travelling around a lot of the UK; there wasn't much that he didn't recognise the scent of. A single vamp wasn't much of a threat, he been able to take down more than that by himself in a single fight for years, but the unknown thing that travelled with vamps, that smelt so wrong, that he didn't know the fighting capabilities of, worried him.

He'd walked back into Rhayader late the following night and hung about to see if the vampire and its stinky friend would appear, but there had been nothing and the old scent trail was all but gone, drown out by the movement of too many people and brief spring shower. The chances were they'd probably just been travelling through and he'd never smell or see them again, but it never hurt to be prepared, Tom thought as he put the finishing touches to the stake. He'd got the start of a new life here, a normal life, and he wasn't about to let vampires ruin it or his growing friendship with Andy.

Andy had been as good as his word providing food for him and they ate together more often than not. Lighting the range had seemed to have become his job, while Andy more often than not did all the washing up, with cooking was split equally between them. It wouldn't win any prizes, with most things coming out of packets, tins and jars, but it was filling, which was just as well as fixing up the farm was hard, physical work.

They had far more enthusiasm than skill for the jobs that they were doing, but it was fun. It was also what his dad would have called an honest days work. There was something satisfying in that and in seeing the difference they were making to the buildings, how at the end of each day the place looked just that little bit better.

Putting the newly finished stake into the tent behind him, Tom turned his attention to another piece of wood. A small, twisted piece this time, which he'd been working on arriving in the Elan Valley.  
It had been a while since he'd done any carving that wasn't stakes, the wooden animals he'd made for Eve, months before having been the last of them. It felt good to get back into making them again, although tore him up inside to think too much about Eve. She'd just been a baby, she should have had her whole life ahead of her. Bloody vampires and their stupid prophecies and mind games they played on each other. Vampires had cost him his dad and George and Nina and Eve and Annie.

Hal had been the exception. Hal had been Hal first and vampire second. He'd been odd, but in a nice way. And there'd a very good reason for odd things he did, all the routines, like stacking up dominoes or doing having to listen to a particular old radio program at a certain time of day – it was try and keep himself from going out and biting people. But without Leo and Pearl, Tom had seen that Hal's control had started slipping, and he'd made it worse taking Hal to work with him in the cafe. They'd needed the money though. And then the Old Ones had turned up and everything had fallen apart again and he'd lost pretty much everybody he'd been friends with for the second time in less than a year.

Caught in memories both good and bad, Tom didn't notice Andy approaching him, until he was standing just at the edge of the hollow where he'd pitched his tent.

"Nothin's wrong, is it?" he said, standing up suddenly, trying not altogether successfully to hide his surprise, the wooden animal he'd been working falling to the ground..

"No. I just wanted to see what you wanted for tea tonight." Andy bent down and picked it up. "There's a tinned chicken and veg pie or we can try and do something with corned beef again."

"Pie'll do," Tom replied. "I'll sort out some bits of wood for the fire and get it lit in a while."

"Did you make this?" Andy asked, looking with interest at the newly finished wolf.

"Yeah, I know it ain't very good," Tom said, wishing that it had been the stake he'd been making. At least then he could have said it was just really big tent peg. Nobody would be interested in those.

"I wouldn't say that," Andy tuned the wolf over a few times. "It's better than some of the stuff they've got in souvenir shops. There's something...I don't know...real about it."

Part of Tom wanted to believe him, the other the part, the one that had grown wary after Kirby and Larry, refused to take him seriously. "Nah, you just saying that to be polite, aren't you?"

"Maybe a bit," Andy admitted, handing it back to him. "It's still good though. You really did all this with just a penknife?"

"Yeah." Tom looked at where Andy's hand still lingered against his. It was nice in a confusing kind of way.

Seeming to realise what he was doing, Andy pulled his hand back. "If you had some proper tools I think you'd be really good."

"Me good at something?" Tom laughed, trying to pretend both to Andy and to himself that it didn't matter to him what people thought. "Now I know you're jokin'."

"I'm not. Everybody's good at something."

It made sense, he thought. Everybody he'd met had had something that they could do well, so he decided Andy was just telling the truth and wasn't trying to trick him. "So what are you good at?" Tom asked, curious as to what the answer would be.

"I don't know. I'd always thought it was being decent copper, but..." Andy's eyes met Tom's for a moment and then he sighed turned away.

The raw hurt that had been clear in eyes surprised Tom. He'd not given too much thought to why Andy was living out here or why in the week or so he'd been there he'd not mentioned anybody as a friend or talked about his past apart from to say he'd not lived on a farm before he got Cwm Elan farm. It was a little bit odd now he thought about it.

Changing the subject before Tom could ask any more questions, Andy said, "I'm going into Rhayader in a couple of days. I need to do some shopping and collecting some new parts for the old generator." He looked at the wooden wolf again. "We can take them to a few of the souvenir and craft shops and see if they're interested in selling a few for you."

"You're not just winding me up are yer?" Tom said, still cautious about allowing himself to get his hopes up. "'Cause I don't wanna get laughed at when they see them."

"I wouldn't do that." Andy looked genuinely hurt at the idea that he'd deliberately set Tom up for failure and ridicule.

Feeling suddenly self-conscious and a little bit silly, Tom mumbled, "Well I jus' wanted to make sure."

An awkward silence followed, as Tom scuffed his shoes in the ash at the edge of the camp fire and Andy looked at everywhere where Tom wasn't. "I should go," Andy said eventually, pointed back at the farmhouse. "Things I should do. I'll find you some sandpaper if you like for the wood."

"Yeah, that'd be great," he replied, "I'll be up in a couple of hours and get the fire lit. Okay?"

"Okay, see you then."

Tom watched him go, unable to work out if he was disappointed or relieved to be alone again. Andy confused him sometimes, just like Hal and Allison had, made him feel weird and protective, although he doubted either of them would have wanted or appreciated it if he'd told them. He knew that feelings and dealing with people definitely weren't things he was good at, but he was sure he was getting better at it.

The idea that somebody might have used Andy like Kirby or Larry had done with himself still made Tom angry, made him want to tell them that should apologise. Andy seemed like the nicest bloke you could hope to meet, he'd given him a place to stay, a job, food, he'd always been nice to him and he didn't call him stupid when he totally missed the point or hadn't heard of something. The fact that all Andy seemed to want in return was someone to help on the farm and somebody to talk to was both somehow reassuringly normal and, now he that thought about it, a little bit sad. Andy didn't seem to have a life outside of the farm at all.

As far as Tom could tell Andy only left the farm to buy food or things needed to fix the buildings. He didn't seem to have any friends or know anybody in the village. Nor did he mention any family or have any pictures. It felt like he was deliberately cutting himself off from the world or at least from whatever his life had been before he moved to the Cwm Elan.

It was sad, Tom thought, picking up the wooden wolf. Even when it had just been him and his dad they'd still done stuff that was fun. Like sneaking each other into cinemas when they'd only got enough money for one ticket or finding work down on the coast in the summer when he'd been a kid so he'd been able to join in the free stuff that the local councils put on in the school holidays.

You needed time alone sometimes, it let you have chance to think about things, but being alone all the time was hard. But never having anybody to talk to, to ask for advice or to make you a cup of tea if you'd had a really horrible day or felt rotten, was hard. If things went really badly wrong Tom knew he could always go back to Alex and Hal, the question of whether Andy had anybody to turn to all bothered him, mainly because there was the nagging doubt that perhaps there wasn't anybody or at least anybody he could trust.

It was an awful situation to be in if it were true, Tom thought sadly, especially as he'd got the suspicion that Andy had only chosen to cut himself off because somebody had done something to hurt him.

After one last look at the farm, Tom sat back down to work on another wooden animal. He'd have to be extra nice to him from now on, he decided. Now that he'd been paid he could suggest they go to the pub or see a film or something one evening. It would be nice, Tom thought happily, wood shavings starting to fall again. He just hoped Andy would say yes.

* * *

NOTE.

I know that in the previous part what Tom appeared to say was that he was a naturist ie he takes his clothes off, rather than a naturalist. This was him using the wrong word.


	9. Chapter 9

Andy had to admit, as they left the only shop willing to take a chance on them, that the trip into Rhayader to sell Tom's carvings hadn't been quite as successful as he had hoped it would be. Ten pounds for three was hardly a good price given the amount of work that Tom must have put in on them, but the shopkeeper had said that if they sold well he'd be willing to buy some more.

Tom had seemed happy with it, and Andy supposed that was all that mattered, although he hoped that if the carvings did prove to be a success that the shopkeeper would be willing to pay a little more for them in future.

With the new parts for the generator collected and securely locked in the back on the landrover, Andy turned his attention to getting the shopping done. It would have to be mostly dried and canned goods again, Andy thought as he wished he'd remembered to make a shopping list, as although he hoped that the new parts would mean that the generator would be reliable enough to run a fridge, he wasn't going to risk buying one until he was sure.

"I've bin thinking," Tom said suddenly, stopping without warning as he did so that Andy walked into the back of him. "I wondered if you wanted to go out."

Andy blinked, not sure he'd heard Tom right, and even if he had whether Tom actually meant it like that. "Out?" he repeated, hoping he didn't look or sound too idiotic.

"Yeah. I know you're kind of like my boss I 'spose, what with the farm and that, but I thought we could be like mates or something and go to the cinema or the pub." Tom stopped and scuffed his shoe along the pavement, looking suddenly uncertain of himself. "It were only an idea. I mean if you don't want to you don't have to, I just thought..."

"Alright then," Andy said quickly, not wanting Tom to think that he didn't want t spend time with him. It was still hard not to sound disappointed though. "Cinema it is."

There hadn't been much on at the cinema in the end, the choice limited to the latest Bond film and romantic comedy, but two over priced tickets, two even more overpriced tubs of popcorn and one rather better than he'd expected it to be Bond film later, Andy had to admit it was shaping up to be a very good evening. Leaving the cinema, he gave a quick glance at Tom who was walking along beside him, still eating popcorn and talking enthusiastically about the film. Tom wasn't the sort of guy he'd have given a second glance at in a club, too young, too scruffy, too short. It made him wonder if he'd missed out on talking to or more with some really great guys.

"So what do you wanna do now?" Tom said between mouthfuls. "D'ya want to get somethin' proper to eat?"

It really was starting to feel like the most date like non-date that he'd been on, and Andy smiled as he replied, "Alright, what sort of thing were you thinking?"

"I don't mind, nothin' too fancy though."

Andy doubted there was anything that would really qualify as fancy in Rhayader, but he understood what Tom meant. Even dressed in what was most likely he least shabby set of clothes Tom still looked scruffy. The coat was the worst of it, an ancient waxed jacket that had probably once, about twenty years ago, been very nice, now it was definitely past its best. Andy thought for a moment before replying, "There's a place a couple of streets over that seems to mostly cater for hikers, they probably won't mind us."

His mouth full of popcorn again, Tom gave him a thumbs up rather than an actual reply.

Rhayader was, if possible, even quieter in the evening than during the day so the shouting match that was going on in front the pub a little way up the road ahead of them was rather noticeable.  
Two women in their late teens or early twenties and three lads of about the same age where standing outside the door engaged in what politely would have been called an verbal altercation on a report form were he still in the police, but was actually a screaming argument where every other word seemed to be a profanity.

It didn't appear to be the progress of kicking off into anything worse than hurt feelings for all involved in it, so Andy decided crossing the road to avoid having to squeeze past them on the narrow pavement was the best plan.

They'd just crossed the road when Tom held out his nearly empty popcorn box to him. "Could you hold this a minute?"

"Sure," Andy replied, assuming Tom needed to retie the laces on his trainers. Tom however crossed back over the road and and walked quickly over to the arguing youths before Andy had a chance to ask him what he was doing.

"You shouldn't talk to a lady like that," Tom said walking up to the largest and loudest of the men and tapping him on the shoulder. "And swearing like that ain't half as clever or hard as you think it is. It just makes you look stupid."

"Piss off," he slurred, turning to face Tom as he did. "What's it matter you how I talk to her, she a lying, cheating bi-"

"I said you shouldn't talk them like that, it's not nice," Tom interrupted as he moved between the man and the two women, who were staring at him in confusion.

"An' I said I do what I fucking well like." He looked at his two friends, before swinging his fist at Tom. "Come on, lets teach this little wanker a lesson."

Tom ducked the punch easily, then dropping into a crouch kicked one leg out and tripped one of them, before landing a solid punch to the stomach on the guy who'd tried to hit him.

It wasn't just luck, Andy could see that. There was a well practised ease that showed Tom knew exactly what he was doing. He was just as much in his element here as he was in the woods, and Andy couldn't help but wonder just what sort of life Tom had been used to living where he was so familiar with fighting that nearly being punched in the face by a complete stranger didn't even give him pause.

The third guy, the smallest of the three, seeing his chance while Tom was distracted with the other two, smacked him across the face, twice hard and in quick succession. The women gave each other a worried look and ducked back inside the pub, where some of the locals were now starting to stare out of the window at the disturbance outside.

"Hey, leave him alone!" Andy called out, dropping the box of popcorn and dashing back across the road, as Tom, who'd barely flinched at either of the blows, retaliated by kneeing the guy who'd punched him in the crotch. Seeing Andy about to join him and their advantage in numbers diminishing, they stepped back, pulling their now red faced and uncomfortable friend with them.

"You had enough?" Tom said, wiping blood from his cut lip with his hand. "'Cause you might think your clever knowin' all them rude words, but you're right rubbish at fightin'"

The door to the pub opened and a man who Andy suspected what the owner, leant out and yelled,  
"You clear off the bloody lot of you or all call the police, you see if I don't!"

"This place is a shit hole anyway," the guy Tom had tripped up spat back at the landlord, before making an obscene gesture at them. "Come on we can find somewhere better than this."

"Do you reckon I should go in and see if they're alright?" Tom said looking at the pub, trying to see to see if the young women were still inside, now that they were alone.

"No," Andy said, putting a hand on Tom's shoulder, feeling rather guilty at the fact that it was more for his own benefit than Tom's. It felt like the whole evening had been ruined, even though Tom didn't seem to be upset at all. He'd broken up fights far worse than this back when he'd been in uniform and thought nothing of it, now he just felt cold and sick and shivery."I think we should go. They can always get a taxi home or phone for their parents if to they don't want to walk."

"Yer probably right," Tom said, not sounding totally convinced. He looked at Andy, then said, "Are you okay? They didn't hit you or owt did they?"

"No. Why?" Andy replied distracted by the rapidly darkening bruise on Tom's cheek. The fear that it could have been worse filling his mind far more than the relief the relief that it it hadn't been.

"It's just your hand is shaking right bad." He reached up and put his own on it. "I thought you said you used to be police? That can't have bin worse than the sort of stuff they have to deal with."

"There's a reason why I left," Andy said, pulling his hand away, knowing he wasn't in any state to talk about any part of what happened rationally right now. The months of talking behind his back and snide comments that he was meant to hear from colleagues who he'd believed were his friends following what had happened on the Cromwell Estate had destroyed so much of his confidence, that combined with everything else, he still wasn't sure how he'd managed to avoid having a complete breakdown under the pressure. Perhaps if he'd not been thrown on the scrap heap he would have.

Tom looked like he was about to say something and then stopped like he'd thought better of it. He poked at the cut on his cheek, and then said, "I don't 'spose you still wanna go to the pub, do you?"

Andy shook his head. Right now he wanted nothing more than to get back to the farm, lock the door behind him and pretend the world outside didn't exist. He looked at Tom's barely disguised disappointment and realised that maybe it wasn't the whole world he wanted to shut out. Tom who seemed to care about him, who wanted to be his friend, would be welcome company. "How about we get some beer and a takeaway and have it back at the farm?"

"Sounds like a plan." Tom smiled, happy again. "Do wanna get pizza?"

To Andy's relief the takeaway pizza place had been quiet and the person behind the counter had carefully avoid making any mention of the fact Tom had obviously been in a very recent fight. While at the off license Tom had decided to wait outside, saying that he didn't fancy getting asked for ID as he didn't have any.

Still holding the pizza boxes, Tom sat on the low wall at the edge of the car park underneath a streetlight as Andy unlocked the landrover and put in the bag from the off license in the back.

Turning back to him, Andy could see that a bruise was already starting to form on Tom's cheek. The cut was small though, just a couple of centimetres break in the skin. He doubted it would leave much of a mark once it healed. Without thinking he reached out to touch it, wanting to reassure himself that he was right, that it was nothing.

"It's alright," Tom said taking hold of his hand and gently, but firmly lowering it. "I've had worse."

"The scars?" Andy asked carefully, uncertain if he should really mention them, even though Tom had seemed completely at ease with him seeing them a few days earlier.

"No, well yeah, but I weren't meaning them." Tom stood up, releasing Andy's hand as he did, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. "Look I've been in enough fights to know how to handle myself, okay. So you shouldn't worry about me."

Too late for that, Andy thought, as he watched him climb into the landrover. Far, far too late.

Driving up the narrow, rutted track to the farm was bad enough in the daylight, in the dark and with the ancient landrover's less than bright headlight, it did little help calm Andy's nerves and he was relieved to park it up outside the farmhouse without having scraped it along a wall or tipped it into a ditch.

A couple of hours later, with the beer drunk and the pizza eaten, the cold, hard knot in his chest seemed to have finally eased, Tom's warm, reassuring presence at his side finally helping him relax. Tom who was funny, kind, brave, modest and, Andy thought sadly, apparently not interested in him as anything other than a friend. And, he noticed with a smile, who'd asleep against his shoulder and was snoring quietly, his can of beer still held loosely in one hand.

There was no sense in waking him, and after the fight this evening Andy knew he'd sleep better knowing that Tom was safe, so after putting a blanket over him, he turned out the light and went to bed.


	10. Chapter 10

Waking up in a house was different from waking up outside or even in a tent. The light was different, muted or extinguished through the curtains and the smells were different too, wet earth and woodlands replaced by food and the scent of human life. You probably had to be a werewolf to appreciate the last one, Tom thought, lying on the sofa and looking up at the ancient wooden beams running across the ceiling. Houses were, unless you were really unlucky, also a lot less damp and itchy than the woods.

It was the first time he'd slept inside since leaving Honolulu Heights. He looked at the clock on the wall, it was still early, but he knew that back in Barry Island, Hal would already be up and, if he was sticking to his routine, he'd be making toast which had to be cut into precise triangles and listening to Radio 4. Alex would probably be watching the telly or reading a magazine. He felt sorry for Alex, being a ghost had to harder than being a wolf or vampire. His was only one night a month and vampires had choice whether or not to bite somebody, even if it wasn't an easy choice. She couldn't be seen by normal humans, couldn't eat or drink or sleep, and it would only end when she moved on to whatever was on the otherside, and even with that she didn't get a choice about when it would happen. Nope, given a choice between being a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost, Tom thought, he'd pick werewolf every time. Obviously if normal human was an option he'd go for that.

Next time they were in Rhayader he'd have to get a postcard to send them and let them know where he was and that he was alright, something funny. It wasn't like he could phone, he thought, getting up and wandering over to the door. He could try, but as ghosts and vamps didn't show up on things like photos, videos or answering machines, he wasn't all that sure he'd be able to hear them on the phone. It wasn't something that had ever come up before, although after living together for a few months he wasn't sure why.

The drizzly grey rain falling across the valley helped wake him up and clear his head as he made the short trip to and from the outside toilet. Then after a quick wash using the old water pump at the side of the farm yard, Tom went back inside.

Andy still wasn't up, so trying to make as little noise as possible he lit the fire in the range and put on the kettle and a pot of porridge, before getting a book and heading back to the sofa.

The book was rather more sci-fi than he generally read and he soon found his mind wandering, thinking about what had happened the previous night. The fight outside the pub hadn't been much, the men had more than a little drunk. He hope that the women were alright. They'd certainly been holding their own in the argument beforehand, but he'd sill not felt able to just walk by without saying anything. He knew people saw him as old fashioned regards swearing and things, but that was how his dad had taught him to be. Always be polite, give up your seat or open a door for a lady or old person, unless they were a vampire in which has just stake them before they had a chance to rip your throat out or stab you.

The fight seemed to have shaken Andy more than Tom thought it should, given that he'd not done anything other than watch. It was odd, Tom thought as he got the now hot kettle off the range and made himself some tea. It had been at least a couple hours after the fight and with a few beers in him that he'd had final felt him stop shaking. Part of him wanted to put it down to Andy being a normal human, that they weren't used to the everyday violence that seemed to come with being not quite human.

That didn't make sense though, Andy had been in the police, a little scuffle like that surely would have just been part of normal policing on a Friday or Saturday night if were he'd been stationed had been like just about any town Tom had been to. He had to have seen worse than that. He glanced towards the bedroom door a frown on his face. He liked Andy and because of that he worried about him.

Retreating back to the sofa again, this time with his tea, he wondered what it was that had happened to Andy to make him leave the police force. Being a police officer was one of those jobs that people tended to have until they retired and there was no way that Andy was that old. So that must have meant he'd quit or been sacked over something. He really couldn't see anybody sacking him, he was too nice. So that only really left him having quit.

He looked back at the bedroom door again. Andy didn't seem like the kind of person who quit easily. If he had been he wouldn't have taken on a place that needed so much work. Maybe something really, really awful had happened to him, he thought with a sinking feeling, and that was why he'd been so shaken up by the fight. What if somebody had died? He knew how much losing somebody could hurt, how the guilt could eat you up, unless you found a way to think about something else. He'd been lucky, after losing his dad he'd had George and Nina, and after them Annie and Eve, and then Hal and Alex. He'd never had to really be properly alone, unless he'd wanted to be.

Losing people took everybody differently though, he remembered George both before and after Nina's death, how there had in the end been nothing left but overwhelming grief and guilt, that none of them could ease. The idea that Andy could have suffered like that, maybe alone, with nobody to turn to, upset him more than he could say.

He was still worrying about it when Andy finally emerged from his bedroom, looking tired and a little bleary eyed. Whether it was because he was a bit hungover, hadn't slept well or a combination of the two Tom wasn't sure. Getting up, he said, "Kettle ain't long boiled, do you want a cuppa."

"Thanks," Andy said gratefully, sitting down heavily on the sofa. "How's your face this morning?"

"It's fine. It don't hurt," Tom said, dumping a teabag in a mug pouring and hot water on it. When you went through the bone breaking agony of a werewolf transformation every four weeks the occasional bump or bruise pretty much stopped registering. "So what we doin' today?"

Andy leant back on the sofa and closed his eyes."I should probably take a look at the other barn, see whether it'll be easier to fix it or knock it down and start again."

"I can take a look with you, if you want," Tom said handing over the mug of tea and then sitting down next to him.

Later that morning, with Andy looking rather better after more tea and some of the just about edible porridge, they went to look at the other outbuilding.

Situated on the opposite side of the farmhouse from the barn which Andy had been working on when Tom first arrived at Cwm Elan farm, it was in a far worse state of repair. Although clearly newer in places than the barn the corrugated metal roof was rusted through in numerous places and had fallen in at one end where the wall had partially collapsed, while the whole of the structure was over run with waist high weeds.

"So what was this place for?" Tom said, climbing over the rubble in the collapsed corner towards where some copper piping was sticking out of the floor.

"According to the farm records," Andy said carefully picking his way through the waist high weeds and tumbles of stone to join him. "This was used for milking cows during the forties, apparently they made a lot of the sheep farms go over to cows during the war so there was enough milk. I think they gave up on cows in the fifties. I suppose Edith must have used it for storage for a while, but I guess she just let it fall into this state when the farm started getting too much for her."

"Who's Edith?" Tom asked, looking at the piping. It seemed to run under the floor of the building and if it was all intact it could be worth quite a bit. It was the sort of scrap haul that used to have his dad smiling and planning what they were going to do with the money.

"She's my aunt," he replied distractedly, mind clearly else where again.

"She must have liked you a lot to leave you a place like this." Tom stood back up. He knew that they'd be able to strip the copper out over the course of a few days if they worked hard on it. The corrugated metal roof was a lost cause, it was so rusted that he knew that no scrap dealer would give you anything for it. The rest of the building probably could be fixed up, but it would be a lot of work, far more than with the barn or the walls and paths around the farmyard.

"She hardly knew me,"Andy said slowly shaking his head. "She just wanted the farm to stay in the family, and I was the only one who wanted it. It came at the right time, if hadn't..." He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets before turning away.

"There's a fair bit of copper piping in here, I 'spose it must've bin from the milking machines," Tom said, wanting to distract him, certain now that Andy's reason for choosing to live out in the arse end of nowhere was because something horrible had happened. "I reckon you could sell it for a right tidy bit of cash if you wanted to."

There's a brief pause as Andy sought to push down whatever it was that had been trying to consume him. "You think so?"

"Yeah. Me and me dad used to do a fair bit of scrap collecting," Tom said hoping that it wasn't so vague that Andy would ask any more questions about just where they got their scrap from. He doubted an ex-policeman would hold with breaking into old factories and nicking stuff, even if nobody had used the place for years. "Copper is about three pound fifty a kilo, so I reckon there's gotta at least fifty quids worth in here, might be more. It'll be a lot of work though, getting it all out and fixing the place up."

If Andy had any questions about just where him and his dad used to get their scrap he chose not to voice them. Instead he smiled and said, "I guess you'll working in here a bit longer than I first planned. Well if you want to."

"Course I want to," Tom said quickly. In the short time he'd been at Cwm Elan farm it had rapidly started to feel like home, a place he could see himself in months or even years to come. It was stupid to think like that, he knew, once the farm was fixed up he'd have to be off. Even with everything going well it would be early autumn before the place ready for campers, and generally nobody much went camping that late in the year, so it wasn't like Andy would need him to help with guests.

Looking and sounding happier than he had since before the fight, Andy said, "Right then, I think I'd better get on with fixing the generator and finally get round to ordering a fridge. We can make a start on this tomorrow."


	11. Chapter 11

Things were definitely looking up, Andy thought as he finished writing on the calendar. In just over two weeks he'd had have his very own solar panels and storage battery. The ten grand it had cost had been a sizeable chunk of his lump sum pay out, but it did mean that he'd not have to worry about lighting or power costs for years to come.

Looking out the living room window he could see Tom already hard at work on the old milking shed, stripping off the rusted metal roof. Tom confused him in the nicest possible ways. They spent most of their time together, working or talking or just sitting around, Tom reading or carving, since the shop had agree to buy ten more wooden animals from him, and himself reading or playing a game on his laptop now that they had the generator working reliably enough that he had somewhere to plug it into to charge.

Ever since the fight in Rhayader Tom had made a point of asking if there was anything he wanted, if he needed any help with anything, sought out his opinion on a variety of things and seemed genuinely interested in whatever he had to say. He'd wondered at first if Tom had been trying very subtly to flirt with him, but Tom didn't seem to do subtle in anything else. In fact he'd been nothing but open and painfully honest with him on just about everything apart from a few details about his past which Andy suspected he held back as they weren't entirely legal and were upsetting for him to remember. Honestly it had been a relief to have somebody like that around to remind him that not everybody was talking about him behind his back.

Andy was still looking out the window wondering if he was totally miss reading the situation with Tom when his phone rang. Reluctantly he turned away from the window, hoping it wasn't the solar panel fitters trying to sell him a load of expensive extras or a customer service survey follow up call or them trying to sell him optional extras, he picked up his mobile. "Andy Davidson speaking."

"Hiya, how are things going?"

"Gwen?" Andy didn't bother trying to hide his surprise. Not that he wasn't happy to hear from her, but since joining Torchwood Gwen really didn't do social calls. "Things are going okay. Better than they had been in ages really. Has something happened?"

"I'm fine. So are Rhys and Ceri."

He could hear the 'but' in her voice and wondered if the 'I know it's all going to hell, but I'm still putting a brave face on it' smile was there too. He hoped not, they'd all had too much to put up with lately. "Something has happened though, hasn't it?" he asked, feeling his good mood slipping away, nerves starting to claw at him.

There was a pause and then Gwen said, "You remember the Nikki and Jonah Bevan case, don't you?"

Andy took shaky breath. Trying to convince himself and Gwen that he really wasn't starting to freak out about what she was going to say, he was rather pleased with himself when he managed a rather jokey,"I'm hardly likely to forget. You left me looking like a right tit at the dock, going off in the boat like that, you know."

"Sorry about that, I didn't want you to get mixed up in it. Not before I knew what was out there. The things I seen..." she trailed off.

"So what's happened?" Andy asked, hating how much Torchwood had taken from her, what it did to everybody who got too close. Certain now that it wasn't good news, he added, "They found him didn't they?"

After this length of time there was almost no chance Jonah would have been found alive. The circumstances of his disappearance had meant that an accident was highly unlikely. The chances where that Cardiff CID would now be gearing up for a murder investigation. He'd been one of the original investigating officers and he'd spent a good bit of his own off duty time helping Nikki Bevan organise her missing persons support group. They'd definitely want to talk to him, ask him why he'd failed. He sat down feeling lightheaded and sick. He couldn't do it. Couldn't face Nikki Bevan and know he'd failed her.

"Andy? Are you still there?"

"Yes," he said weakly, fighting the urge to just switch off the phone. Had Gwen said anything else? He wasn't sure. "They've finally found him then?" he asked hoping he wasn't asking something she'd just told him.

"They've not found him. I mean Nikki had known where he was since just after I went out to Flat Holm. There a place out there, sort of like a hospital I suppose, for people who've seen things...Torchwood things."

"So why are you telling me this now?" It's more hurt and angry than he intended it to be, as he knew that Gwen would only have called him if she'd thought it was the right thing to do.

"Don't be like that, I just didn't want you hearing it on the news or oh I don't know somewhere, and thinking I didn't care enough to tell you. So I thought I should do it, that I should be the one to tell you."

Andy swallowed hard. Gwen sounded upset and that was never a good sign. "It's bad isn't it?"

"They're dead," Gwen said quietly. "I had to go and identify them this morning."

"Them? Jonah and who…oh hell." There was a rushing noise in his ears Andy knew he was missing most of what Gwen was saying. Cliff and accident filtered though, but little else.

"…cleared it so they won't contact you. I didn't know you were still off until I asked if they'd told you. Seems like ages since I last saw you, when are you going to be back in Cardiff?"

"I'm not," Andy said faintly, glad he was sitting down. "I sold my flat. I left. I'm not coming back."

"You've transferred?" Gwen asked, surprised. "I hope it's somewhere nice and they've pushed you out to some back office pushing paper."

"I've left the police. I had the choice between taking medical retirement or facing prosecution, what do you think I picked?" Andy said, the helpless anger that he felt at the time he found not having eased in the long months since. Even if the thought of putting on his uniform had, by the end of his service, made him come out in cold sweat, he'd still wished that leaving been his choice and on his terms, not something he'd been bullied and pushed into it.

"Bloody hell, I had no idea. Why didn't you call me? I would have set them straight. You were a good copper, you cared about people, you were one of the best of us. Do you want me to see if I can get them to reconsider?" Gwen said, sounding determined. "Torchwood's got a bit of leverage again now. Apparently the Queen - the actual Queen, Andy, had a word with them, the government, privately like. She didn't take too kindly to them blowing up crown property apparently."

"Don't ask. Please don't ask them." Andy closed his eyes, palms slick with sweat, starting to shake. "I couldn't tell you then, you only just had a baby. But I can't go back there. Not back to everybody talking about me behind my back, waiting for me freak out and cock it all up again. Gwen, just please leave it alone."

"Hey, slow down a minute, you sound awful. Are you going to be alright?" Gwen sounding really worried for him. "Do you want me to come over? I can drop Ceri at my mam's…Just tell me where you're living now."

"No, don't." He wanted nothing more than to retreat somewhere nobody could see him or could talk to him and where he didn't have to worry about what anyone thought about him doing that. "I'll be alright. I've got to go. I'm getting some solar panels delivered soon." It's a lie, but two weeks is close enough that it doesn't feel like too much of one given the circumstances.

Gwen didn't sound that convinced and asked, "Have you got anybody there with you? I wish I hadn't told you any of this now. You really don't sound like you should be on your own at the minute."

"I'm not, there's Tom. He's working with me to fix up the place. I'll be alright." He nodded, trying to convince himself that it was the truth. "Really, I'll be alright, it was just a bit of shock. I really like her."

"Well if you're sure," Gwen said sounding less than happy with it. "Look, can I call you back later, we could catch up about other stuff. I'd be nice to talk again."

She was lonely, he could tell, mixing having a young baby, a husband who spent much of the time driving long distance lorries and a job a isolating as Torchwood had to be hard. But as much as he wanted to help her didn't feel able to deal with anybody else's problems at the moment, even if they were a friend. "I can't, I'm going out. I'll call you sometime, in a few days maybe. Bye."

Ending the call before Gwen could say anything else, he sat at the table staring blankly at the phone. Why had he said he'd call? He didn't want to. He didn't want to do anything or talk to anyone. The mobile bleeped with an incoming text and he glared at it, willing it to go away, to leave him alone. The phone beeped again, insistent to be answered, and he picked it up, holding it for a moment before throwing it as hard as he could at the wall.

He couldn't really have picked a worse time as just as the phone shattered, Tom walked in. He looked at the bits of broken mobile and said, "I take it the call to them solar power blokes didn't go right good then?"

"What! No, that went okay, it's all good," Andy said distractedly, hoping that Tom would believe it and leave him alone.

"Yer shaking again," Tom said sounding worried as he moved closer. "This ain't about the fight is it? I ain't in trouble am I?"

Gripping the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white, Andy said, "No, nothing like that. It was just...er, just someone I used to know. Someone from my old job. They'd just solved an case we'd worked. I'm fine really."

"But that's good news ain't it?" Tom put a hand on his shoulder. "So why are yer so upset? It ain't 'cause it's to do with why you left is it?"

"I didn't leave," Andy said bitterly. What was it with people not wanting to leave him alone today? "They pushed me out. Not mentally fit for the role, a danger to my colleagues and the public apparently."

"That's rubbish. You're alright?" Tom gave his shoulder a squeeze. "You seem alright to me."

Andy closed his eyes. He couldn't let himself take any comfort now or he was going break. What he needed, he told himself, was to be left alone until he didn't feel like running out the door and never stopping. "Just leave it, you wouldn't understand."

"I won't if you don't tell me, will I?" Tom said, kindly. "So why don't you give it a try. I might even be able to help."

"I said leave it! I've not pestered you about your weird life, have I?" Andy snapped, pushing Tom's hand from his shoulder. "I only hired you because I felt sorry for you."

The look of hurt and confusion in Tom's eyes made him think of the sad-eyed, abandoned puppies that the RSPCA used for their 'A dog is for life' ads. He'd wanted Tom give him some space, but he'd gone too far. "Tom, I didn't..."

"Yes, yer did." Tom turned away and headed for the door. "I'll be out in the barn if you need me. Or I can jus' go if yer want."

"Of course I don't."

"Not while you can still use me, right?" Tom opened the door. "Yer jus' like the rest," he said, sounding more hurt and disappointed than angry, before slamming the door shut behind him.

"Tom, I'm sorry," Andy said quietly to the now empty room. Then, dispensing with any pretence of holding it together, he buried his head in his hands and wept.

x0x0x0x

The whole atmosphere on the farm had changed after that, and while Tom had stayed and worked without complaint, it had also been without conversation unless it was of the 'what needs to be done now' variety. He didn't seem to be angry, he was still polite to him, but there wasn't anything else any more, Andy thought as he watched him work, and it hurt. He'd driven a wedge between them and ruined whatever it was that had been slowly developing, whether it had been friendship or maybe the beginnings of something more, because he was a colossal fuck up and somebody nobody in their right mind would want to be friends with.

Objectively he knew that it wasn't true, once he'd had a lot of friends, people he went to the pub with or the rugby, people who invited to him to house warming parties and weddings. Were they really? The treacherous thought followed with wearying regularity. They dropped you soon enough when they realised that you wasn't any use to them, that you was too odd, that you weren't any use to anybody any more. No, he'd only been their friend when he'd been good old Andy who'd volunteer to cover the crappiest shifts because he wanted to be nice to them, as soon as he was able to then all turned their backs.

There was nothing left in his life apart from renovating the farm, Andy thought bitterly as set to work on removing more of the copper from milking shed, and even that held little appeal now. Something that had felt so promising, like he was building a better future when Tom was speaking to him now felt like a life sapping chore. Once it was fixed up, he told himself, he'd sell it and leave. He didn't know or care where, he just needed to get away from the site of another one of his failures.

Jamming the bar into the gap between the pipe and the wall, Andy tried to copy what Tom was doing at the far end of the milking shed. When pulling the bar towards himself failed to have any affect, and determined not to be beaten by a lump of metal, he moved round to the other side of the now wedged pry bar and tried pushing it away from himself instead.

There was a creak and for a single, horrible moment Andy thought that perhaps he was about to bring the entire wall tumbling down on top of himself, then a piece of the stonework shattered. The pipe however remained in place and the pry bar sprung back out of his hands. There was no time to avoid it and it hit him hard across the bottom of his chest. With a gasp Andy staggered back, pain radiating out from where it had struck.

Stumbling over to where they'd let a pile of sacks of sand and cement a few days earlier, his legs feeling wobbly with fright, Andy sat down heavily and tired to breathe. It hurt to sit upright so Andy leant forwards, trying to take shallow breaths as that seemed to be less painful, but far worse at lessening the spiralling panic fast over taking him.

"What you done now?" Tom asked, failing entirely not to look like he was worried as hell, as he hurried over to him. Crouching down in front of Andy, he said, "You're walking disaster area you."

Wrapping an arm around him aching ribs, Andy let his head fall against Tom's shoulder. "I don't know, but it really hurts."

TBC Wednesday 11/9

* * *

NOTES.

I hope that this didn't appear to be anti Gwen because she gave Andy the bad news. This wasn't my intention. She wasn't trying to be horrible to him and she really does care about him. She didn't know how bad it had been for him as he'd not told her and she'd not been in a situation where she'd have found out.

As this doesn't fit with Miracle Day in any way I decided to give Gwen's daughter a different name to show that.


	12. Chapter 12

The dull, meaty thud of something heavy hitting flesh was unmistakeable and Tom dropped what he was doing and spun round half expecting to find them under attack. Seeing no threat, but Andy in obvious pain, he ran over to him, any annoyance he'd felt towards him temporarily forgotten.

"What you done now?" Tom asked, crouching down in front of him as he tried to get a better look at why he was hunched over. He couldn't see any obvious injury and he couldn't smell any blood, so that had to be a good sign, Tom decided. "You're walking disaster area you."

"I don't know, but it really hurts," Andy said, leaning against him.

"What d'ya mean you don't know?" Tom asked, worried now that he was missing something. "Is it you don't know how you got hurt or you don't know where or you don't know how bad?"

Andy took a moment to answer, then sounding surprised and shocked, said, "The bar I was using, it just sprung back and hit me."

It fitted with what he'd heard and how Andy was holding his ribs. Hoping that what he'd find wouldn't be too bad, Tom said, "Come on, then. You'd better let me have a look."

Andy nodded and then flinched, a hiss of pain escaping him as Tom carefully lifted up the front of his t-shirt. There was a long, raised bruise rapidly starting to form across Andy's ribs. Nothing seemed to be pushed out of shape or bulging out like blood was filling up somewhere it shouldn't be. He knew from past experience that it would hurt like hell for a while, every breath making the bruises ache. Andy was going to be sore for a good few of weeks.

"Stop it!" Andy gasped and pushed Tom's hand away before he could touch the bruise. "What if they're broken? You could poke a hole in something."

"Just try an' calm down, will you? I'm pretty sure they're jus' bruised," Tom said as he pulled the t-shirt back down, knowing that the way Andy was shivering, his breathing shallow and panicked would only be making him feel worse. "I know it hurts a bit..."

"More than a bit," Andy snapped, although he gratefully leant forwards against Tom again, letting him support him.

Tom frowned. His dad had said the wolf made you stronger, perhaps he was expecting too much of Andy, he thought as he felt him shivering against him, he was just an ordinary bloke after all. Maybe normal humans were just a bit more breakable. Maybe it would be best to get him to a doctor, even if was just so he'd could be told it was really nasty bruising by somebody qualified. He was fairly sure that a doctor wouldn't come out to the farm for bruised ribs, but as Andy didn't seem to be willing to take his word for it, he asked "Do you trust me to drive the land rover?"

Andy sounded decidedly worried at the idea and there was definitely scepticism beneath the pain as he said, "Do you even have a driving licence?"

"I got a provisional one. Me dad taught me a little bit and Hal let me have a go with his car a few times." They'd been good times, Tom thought, trying not to let those thoughts turn to how those times would never come again. "I ain't right good, but I can do it without crashing it, the roads round here ain't that busy and I don't 'spose I'd have to drive it that far any way."

Andy looked like he was about to refuse when he coughed, doubling over as it put extra strain on his ribs, "Alright. Just be careful."

The walk in medical centre in Rhayader, which Andy had decided was the closest option, was busier that Tom had thought it would be and the smell of antiseptic and cleaning products he found rather unpleasant. But given how Andy had spent the short journey there hunched up in the front seat, grunts of pain escaping him as the land rover had jolted and rolled down the rutted farm track out to the main road, he was more than willing to put up with the hospital smells.

Walk in apparently didn't mean get seen straight away, Tom rapidly found out. Rather it just meant that if you weren't registered with a GP or your usual doctor couldn't give you an appointment any time soon you could turn up at the walk in centre and wait to be seen. Things would have been so much easier if George and Nina had been alive, Tom thought glumly. Knowing a hospital porter and a doctor who'd been willing to sneak you in a get you treated quickly had been very useful on the occasions him or his dad had needed it.

Eventually Andy's name was called, and Tom walked with him to the door the receptionist had pointed to. "It'll be be fine, you know," he said, feeling rather anxious now that Andy was going to be out of his sight.

Loitering around in the corridor, Tom tried to pass the time looking at shiny posters of people who all seemed to be smiling far too much considering the information was things like flu injections or getting checked various diseases. He was wondering whether to go back to the waiting room and ask how long he could expect to be waiting for Andy and if it was worth nipping out and finding something to eat when Andy walked slowly out of the room, one arm still curled about his ribs.

"That were quick," Tom said, looking him over, trying to see if anything had been done. Quick had to be good, didn't it? Unless the doctor had decided to send him off to hospital in which case it definitely wasn't. "So what'd they say?"

"Definitely bruised, possibly a fracture or two, but apparently the treatment the same either way" Andy said leaning on him as they made their way back to the waiting room. "Basically pick up your prescription on the way out, then go home and rest, and only come back here if it turns serious."

"Yer in still in pain, that's serious to me," Tom said, holding the door open for him. "So what you 'sposed to do now?"

With one arm still held around his ribs, Andy leant awkwardly by the counter. "Just what the doctor said I guess, take some painkillers, get plenty of rest and put some ice on it if it hurts."

It sounded like good solid advice, Tom thought, but there was something missing as far as he was concerned. "My dad always reckoned a good tight bandaged were the best thing."

"Apparently that's considered a bad idea these days," Andy said as he waited for the receptionist to find the prescription. "And I've got to take at least ten deep breaths each hour while I'm awake, even if it hurts, to help prevent chest infections. Apparently I'll be fine in three to six weeks."

With the prescription finally collected, Tom walked Andy back to the land rover, and helped him get in. "Right then, we're stoppin' at the chemist to pick these up and then we'll head back," Tom said, looking at how Andy was sat hunched and miserable in the passenger seat. He wished there was more he could do to help, as though Andy had been horrible to him before, he hated knowing that he was in pain. Caring about somebody even when they had been a bit of a knob about things meant that he was the better person in this, Tom decided. Or at least that's what Annie used to tell him when he'd being dealing with Hal in his early days at Honolulu Heights.

The trip to the chemist had thankfully been much swifter than the walk in centre, and after making sure Andy took one of the tablets, Tom had set off back to the farm. Andy had been very quite on the drive, although whether it was because he was because he was feeling too uncomfortable to talk, he didn't want to distract him while driving or something else, Tom didn't know. Whichever it was he was relieved when they pulled into the farmyard.

"I'm sorry, you know," Andy said as Tom helped him get settled on the sofa.

"Everyone has accidents, that's why there called accidents because you don't do them on purpose," Tom said, knowing it had sounded much better in his head. A lot of the things he said sounded better there, he thought glumly, wishing he could sound kind and funny like Annie or clever like Hal.

"I meant about what I said the other day," Andy said quietly. "About why I gave you a job."

"Oh, that." It still hurt, Tom didn't really want to pretend otherwise, but forgive and forget was starting to seem a sensible option given that he would probably have to spend a fair bit of time with Andy at least until he was feeling better. It would be the adult thing to do, he told himself. At the very least he should hear him out and find out why he'd been so horrible when it seemed to go against everything else Tom had come to know and like about him.

"I didn't mean it, not like that. I'd just had some bad news and I wanted to be on my own and I wanted to...I couldn't..." Andy's voice cracked and he hunched over. "I can't cope with it, and I know it's pathetic, but there it is. And I'm so so sorry I said it to you, because you've been nothing but good to me, and I really don't deserve it."

"Hey, it's okay," Tom said sitting down next to him. He'd not really expected an apology or for Andy to look so absolutely wrecked about it. "I had this friend once, well two of them really, and they both said some pretty awful things after some bad stuff happened. Only I know they didn't mean it really and I guess this is kinda the same, ain't it? So it weren't like it were properly your fault in a way and I should've realised that you were so sad and done something' to help. So maybe it should be me sayin' sorry an'... you're crying, ain't you?"

Andy made a wet, sniffing noise and nodded.

Making Andy cry really hadn't been his intention, it made him feel awkward and awful that he'd not realised just how upset Andy had been. "'m sorry, don't cry, it'll be alright, really. We've both been right idiots about this, ain't we?" he said, only just stopping himself from trying to give Andy a hug, that would have certainly hurt more than helped. "I had this other friend, Annie, she reckoned as that was the problem with blokes, well most of them any way, that that we never talk about stuff, so we get it all wrong all the time. I'm beginning to think she were right."

Andy managed a shaky laugh and then groaned. "Oh, not doing that again any time soon."

"Nah, you probably shouldn't," Tom said, carefully putting an arm around his shoulders. "You probably ain't gonna want to hear this, but they're gonna feel worse tomorrow once you've been to sleep, they get right stiff and achy."

"That sounds like the voice of experience," Andy said, shifting uncomfortably as he tried to find a more comfortable way to sit, eventually deciding that leaning against Tom was the best option. "Is that how you knew they weren't broken?"

"Yeah. I've done mine in a couple of times, not recent like though. The worst time were when me and me dad were fightin' these five…" Seeing Andy's expression, Tom stopped. There really wasn't anyway of telling it that didn't involve mentioning vampires or making it sound like him and his dad went out beating people up for fun. "Yer not gonna be interested really, are yer? It were a rubbish story anyway." Trying not to jostle Andy too much, he got up. "Why don't I get us a cup of tea or do you wanna try and eat something. You should probably try. Soup is 'spose to be good if you're not feeling great, isn't it?"

"Tom, it's alright," Andy said, managing to look more worried than sore for a moment. "I'm not going to ask. Some things are probably best forgotten or at least not talked about."

"Like whatever it was that happened to you?" Tom said, sitting down on the arm of the sofa. He knew he was probably pushing his luck a bit, but it looked like Andy had tried not talking about it and that didn't seem to have gone too well. "I mean you don't have to, you can tell me to shut right up, an' I will and I won't even be annoyed with yer. So it up to you."

"There's not much to tell really." Andy didn't look at him. "I made a choice that I thought was right, that still think was right. Only nobody else saw it like that, they didn't want me around any more, but they couldn't get rid of me, without there being questions. I suppose they just tried to make me want to quit."

"So what, did they like hit you and stuff? 'cause I don't think people you work with are allowed to that," Tom said, worrying that he might be right, as it would help to explain why he'd been so shaken up by the fight outside the pub.

"No, I could have reported that, people would have understood. No, they just stopped talking to me, began acting like I wasn't even there." He picked at a frayed patch on the knee of his jeans, trying to decide what to say. "I know why they did it, they didn't want to risk screwing up their own careers by being friends with me."

"So is that why you packed it in?"

Andy slowly shook his head. "I tried to ignore it. Not let it get to me, but guess it did. Then I was called out to this housing estate, there were all these people shouting, and just for a minute I thought I was back..." Andy stopped and took a couple of shaky breaths before continuing. "I have probably been fine if my DCI hadn't tapped me on the shoulder. I just lashed out, I didn't even realise it was him. They gave me the choice of retirement on mental health grounds or they'd brings charges against me. I couldn't see any point in fighting it, I just wanted it to be over."

"I don't think it sounds like anything what happened were your fault," Tom said, not really sure what he could say or do that would help. "I think you did the right thing leaving them to get on with it, they didn't deserve to have you, not with them treating you like that."

When Andy made no attempt to either agree with him or tell him he'd got it all wrong, Tom said, "You've gone all quiet again. You're not feeling any worse are you?"

"No, I was thinking I should have done this months ago," Andy replied sounding drowsy now that the painkillers were starting to kick in. "Just talked to someone about it, but I didn't think anyone would understand. I was throwing away a good career because a few people weren't speaking to me, at least that how my mum saw it."

"Didn't you try to explain? She must have seen what were going on was making you unhappy, that you couldn't put up with it."

Andy sighed, a brief, sad smile on his lips. "She's got some very ...set ideas about some things, about how people should act, and about what I should be doing with my life."

Tom was sure that there was a lot more to it than that, but decided not to ask any more questions as Andy looked utterly exhausted. Thinking about it, Andy had looked knackered that morning even before they'd started work for the day, not that he'd not really been in the mood then to wonder why. Now he suspected that Andy probably hadn't been sleeping that well since the phone call. It made him glad in a way that the accident had happened. Not that he wanted Andy to be hurt, he didn't, but that it had happened before they'd truly ruined their friendship or Andy had an even more serious accident.

Eyes half closed, Andy yawned, winced and then yawned again, before leaning more heavily against him. Realising he'd have to move or spend the afternoon with Andy asleep against him, Tom picked up a cushion and passed it to him. "Why don't you have a rest and I'll see about getting us some food, being as we ain't had any lunch yet."

"I don't deserve you," Andy mumbled, settling again the cushion, already half asleep.

"And don't deserve to be alone," Tom said, knowing that nobody but himself heard it, and then turned his attention to getting them something to eat.

TBC 15/9

* * *

NOTE

The treatment for Andy's bruised ribs (or broken for that matter as unless they suspect it's more than three they apparently treatment is the same.) come mostly from the NHS website - . strapping up the ribs in now a big no no and the remembering to take frequent deep breaths is a must to help prevent chest infection and even pneumonia. There does seem to be a 'don't bother A&E unless you've broken them in a serious fall, it's from a crushing injury or it from a car crash.' kind of vibe from the NHS. In fact there is no recommendation you see a doctor at all unless you are have problems breathing, the pain gets worse rather than better over time, the pain moves to your shoulder or abdomen, you start coughing up blood or being to run a temperature.

The main advise is take it easy, take painkillers, breath normally and put ice on it (it actually say on the NHS website you could try using a packet of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel.)

This seems to be borne out by some people complaining on a forum about this (found while googling for the NHS article), long waits in A&E, then they weren't X-rayed, they were just assessed visually and sent home with painkillers.


	13. Chapter 13

Waking up, Andy rapidly decided, was no fun at all when even trying to turn over to look at the clock meant feeling like somebody had just given you a swift kick in the ribs. Lying in bed, he stared up at the ceiling. The memories of the previous evening were a little bit hazy, although he remembered clearly enough talking to Tom about why he'd been forced to leave the police.

He still didn't want to think too closely about the bad days when he'd dreaded going into work or the even worse ones when he been on suspension when he'd barely left the house or spoken to anybody for days on end. Knowing there was somebody there to talk to, even if it was about something completely unrelated or inconsequential to act as a distraction when he felt like running from his problems and never stopping, did actually help.

He remembered Tom waking him after he'd slept for a few hours on the sofa and then talking to him about how he'd make sure everything was ready for the solar panels so they wouldn't fall behind on getting most farm fixed up over the summer. He'd kept him awake and distracted long enough to make sure enough of it had passed that he could take another pill before going to bed, and then, when it had when it became apparent that he couldn't actually manage to take off his t-shirt by himself Tom had helped him get ready for bed.

Pushing down the bed covers, Andy looked at the bruising and grimaced. It had developed into a fairly spectacular range of purple, black, blue in a thick line across the bottom of his chest, fading to green and yellow round the edges. It was going to take ages to fade, Andy thought miserably as he pulled the cover back up, not wanting to look at it any more.

Andy was still trying to decide whether he should try getting up before things like getting to the toilet became a more pressing issue, when he heard his phone ring. Not the mobile he'd thrown across the living room few days before, that had been beyond repair, but his old handset that had been relegated to a cupboard drawer after getting his new, and now smashed, mobile. He'd not been happy with the idea of being back in contact with the world, but concern about the solar panel company needing to contact him and change the installation dates had won in the end, and the sim card had been put into the old phone.

The mobile rang for a few moments before stopping. Relieved that he wasn't going to have to get up and answer it, Andy tried to find a more comfortable spot in the bed.

"I said he's asleep, why don't you believe me?" Tom said, a minute or so later, sounding like he was getting worried by the persistence of whoever he was talking to.

He's answered my phone, was Andy's first thought, closely followed by, he must have stayed the night if he here this early. Biting his lip to suppress a groan, Andy got himself into a roughly seated position, propped by pillows. Then, suspecting he already knew who'd phoned, he called out,"I'm awake! You can come it."

Letting himself in to Andy's bedroom, Tom looked briefly at him, before asking, "Do you want me to find you some clothes?"

"No, I'm fine, I'm not cold," Andy said quickly, taking the phone from him, hoping that the person on the other end hadn't heard and come to the wrong conclusion about what was going on. He glanced down at the display. It was Gwen's number.

"Alright, I just finish getting us some breakfast then," Tom said, heading back to the door. "Give me a shout if you need anything."

Anyd waited for Tom to close the door behind him for saying,"Hi, Gwen, sorry I haven't called you back earlier, my phone broke."

"That's okay, now are you going to tell me what's going on?" Gwen said, sound undecided on whether she was more worried or curious. "So just why do you have some strange bloke in your house at seven in the morning while you're in bed with nothing on. Look if I'm interrupting something, I can call back later."

"No, no it's not like that, really," Andy said, pulling up the covers, aware that it was a fairly ridiculous thing to do, as it wasn't like Gwen could actually see him. "And I do have something on."

"You gone all red haven't you?" Gwen said with laugh. "I hope it's not as bad as that time with Sharon on traffic."

"It not," Andy replied, glad that she could see that, if anything, it was worse.

"You sound a lot better than you did the other day," Gwen said sounding relieved. "I was worried about you. Rhys said I was being daft, that you could look after yourself and that you'd be pretty pissed off if I used one of the computer programs to track your phone and find out where you were."

She didn't need to mention Torchwood for him to know that's what she meant. The power and tech that they apparently still had available and the willingness to use and abuse it for their own reasons was down right worrying sometimes. "He's right," Andy said, deciding he really didn't want to know what else Gwen had access to. "And that's not something I say very often about Rhys."

"So how are you really? Tom said something about an accident."

"I lost an argument with a piece of copper pipe, just not paying attention to what I was doing. It's just bruises really." Which was a massive understatement, Andy thought to himself, but he didn't want Gwen to worry about him any more than she already had been. "So the answers is sore, stupid and really grateful that Tom is the nicest, most understanding bloke in the world."

Gwen laughed before she could stop herself. "You're still sticking with nothing going on at all story then, right?"

Andy knew only too well what the situation must have sounded like. It was too close to what he'd like, but was still to scared of rejection to ask for, so he said, "You spend too much time with Harkness."

"No, I don't. Not any more," Gwen said sadly. "He's gone. He left months ago, I don't know even know where he is. After everything, after losing Ianto and his grandson...it was tearing him apart stay. And I couldn't help him, couldn't do anything to make it better."

The silence stretched out between, Andy feeling awkward and uncertain of what to say. He'd not even know that Jack had a grandchild, although given Jack's reputation of flirting with, and presumably sleeping with, just about anybody who fancied him, he supposed there being multiple little Harkness' out there was more likely than not. It was a terrible thing to have happened though whatever the circumstances. "Maybe he'll come back," Andy said, hoping that it was the right thing to say.

"Maybe," Gwen echoed, sounding less than convinced. She sighed and then said, "So who's this Tom and why is he so protective of you? Because it was more than a 'don't disturb my boss he's busy' that I got from him."

"He's a friend, a good friend." It was the safest and most accurate description of what their current relationship was that Andy could think of.

"Are you sure knows that?" Gwen said, sounding concerned for him again. "Just don't lead him on, not when you're not interested."

"I wouldn't do that," Andy said, knowing that him and Gwen were talking at cross purposes, but choosing not to point it out.

"You might not mean to, but you're an attractive bloke, Andy. You're nice, you care about people and you try so hard to make everybody is happy. It'd be easy to misread that, to see something more there. I guess I'm just saying let him down gently and don't let it get to a point where it's going to screw up you being friends with him over it."

It was odd hearing Gwen tell him he was attractive, especially as he'd had a thing for her for years, right from the moment she was paired up with him to go out on patrol. He'd never really had a chance, anybody with half a brain could see that she was always going to pick Rhys in the end. "I suppose you're right," Andy replied, trying not to get his hopes up that Tom might actually fancy him.

"Sorry, I've got to go," Gwen said after a brief pause. "I can hear Ceri's woken up again. She'll be looking for her breakfast. It's been good catching up, well trying to any way. So don't be a stranger, you call me sometime, maybe even come over for visit. I'd like it."

"I'd like that too," Andy said, surprised to find that he actually meant it. "I'll talk to you later then. Bye." Switching off the phone, he lay back against the pillows.

What was he going to do about Tom? Tom who did twisty things to his insides that were wonderful and uncomfortable and which he didn't want to stop. Tom was kind and funny and who'd put up with so much in is short life and still cared so much about others. Tom who was the best thing in his life and who would, once the building work was complete, be gone from it forever. He didn't have a phone or even an address, once he left that would be it, there would be no way of finding him again.

Andy supposed that he could give Tom his old mobile once he got round to replacing the once that he'd smashed, so he could call him. But living as Tom apparently did he wouldn't have anywhere to charge it and there was a reasonable chance that if Tom missed his call he wouldn't have any credit to phone back.

Tom had been far nicer to him than Andy believed he could possibly deserve given what he'd said to him just a few days before. Those days with Tom not speaking to him had been awful, living there without him, Andy suspected, would feel even worse, the farm becoming strange and lonely in a way the place hadn't felt before Tom's arrival. It felt like home with Tom there and Andy found that he was dreading losing it. Yet short inventing more work for Tom to do and getting him to move into the house once the weather turned there was no practical way for him to stay.

He sighed and closed his eyes. It was mess. Inventing work for Tom to felt too much like he'd paying him for their continued friendship and that was so many levels of wrong, especially as he still held out the almost certainly impossible hope that one day it might turn into something more. Not that Tom had expressed any interest whatsoever in that direction or any other. In fact apart from the vague mention of Annie who made greats of cups of tea and who'd been good to talk to he didn't seemed to have had anybody much in his life apart from his late father. And on the rare occasions when he did speak about her he'd always made it sound like she was a friend rather than a girlfriend. There was always a hint of sadness in his eyes when he mentioned her too, like there was when he talked about his dad. It was enough that Andy didn't feel there was anything to be gained by asking any more questions about her and quite possibly something to be lost if he managed to upset Tom or even drive him away by prying.

Wait and see wasn't really much a plan, but for now, Andy decided, especially as he was too sore to do much else, it was the best one he had. All he could do was hope that Tom would give some sign of wanting to be more than friends with him before the summer ended and Tom was gone.

* * *

NOTE.  
At this point Gwen and Andy think that events as seen in CoE is what has happened. From Jack and Ianto's points of view, they are now on a space cruise liner, as per my earlier fic 'Finding Ways To Smile Again.'


	14. Chapter 14

The days following Andy's accident flew past as far as Tom was concerned, although he suspected that they'd dragged horribly for Andy who'd spent much of the first week sitting miserably on the sofa, trying to find things to do which didn't require him to move. For himself, trying to get everything ready for the solar installation people had been hard work.

With Andy unable to do any of the heavy lifting, Tom found himself working from dawn until dusk most days, with any breaks he took spent getting food for them both and making sure Andy was alright. Even with the fact that the installation date had ended up being moved week later than it initially should have been because it had been to wet for the van to get up the track to the farmhouse to deliver what was needed, it had still been a rush to get it all ready on time.

He'd managed it in the end and he'd not minded the hard work or spending time with Andy, Tom thought as he walked through the woods high above the farm. A sore and bored Andy had still been far easier to deal with than Hal had been when he'd coming off the blood, not least because this had a definite end to it with Andy getting better. The fact that Andy hadn't sworn at him, threatened him or raved in detail about how he wanted to massacre whole towns and bathe in their inhabitants blood had been a definite a bonus. Two weeks with a detoxing vampire had really been unpleasant experience for all concerned.

That Hal had gone back on his word almost straight away and had even turned somebody else in to a vampire despite him promising not to, had shaken Tom's trust in whatever it was that had been slowly growing between them. He still liked him, liked the confusing, irritating man that was still non the less fun to be around, but always at the back of his mind would be the fact that when it came down to it, when things were at their hardest, Hal would always be a vampire and that in the end that would always win.

Now, three weeks on from the accident and Andy's confession about why he'd been so horrible to him and why he'd left the police force, things where starting to get back to normal. Or at least as normal as it got for him, Tom thought as he looked around, checking that he was alone.

Although it was a little more than half an hour after dawn the woodland around him was already sunlit, the bright beams of light filtering through the leaves and sparkling on the surface of the stream. Satisfied that nobody was watching, Tom left the bag containing his clothes on the bank, before climbing down into the water.

The with the summer nights remaining light until late and transformation never starting until after the sun had set, Tom had found it easy say he was going to get an early night and then slip away and follow the scent trail he'd laid the previous night. Washing off the grime and remains of the wolf's meal before returning to the farm was a sensible precaution, Tom had decided after waking and seeing the state of himself, if he wanted Andy to believe that he'd spent the whole night asleep in his tent.

It was how it must have been for George and Nina in the months before things started going wrong, Tom thought, picking up his flannel and soap from where he'd left them on the bank. You could live your life around the wolf if you were careful, you didn't have to let it fill up your whole world. It got its night to run free and you got to your live you life like a normal person.

It was, in a way, what he'd imagined having with Allison. They'd get their own house which had woodland nearby and somewhere safe to change inside if there was some reason they couldn't change outdoors. The old coal cellar in the farmhouse would make a good place to change when the weather got too dicey to risk changing out of doors.

Despite the obvious differences it felt right comparing the situation with himself and Andy to George and Nina or him and Allison. He liked Andy, liked him in the way he'd liked Allison, and if the last couple of dreams he'd had were anything to go by he definitely wanted to do things with Andy. Relationship things. He felt himself blush, cheeks growing hot at the memory.

It wasn't the only part of him that remembered, and Tom let his hand, soapy from where he'd started to wash his hair, drop lower. He might be waiting for the right person to come along before he did this with them, he told himself, but it was always good to make sure it was all working properly, at least a few times a week.

He'd really thought Allison had been the one. He'd kissed her and she'd kissed him and they'd done a bit of touching and it had been a lot of fun, but they'd not got any further than taking their shoes and Allison's glasses off, they'd both found that they hadn't been ready for it.

It would be different with Andy, Tom thought, closing his eyes, hand speeding up. Andy was a few years older than him, he'd probably had a girlfriend or boyfriend before, he'd know what he was doing, be able to show him how to do it right. He stopped. What if they started something doing something and he still wasn't ready for it and they had to stop? Knowing that he'd disappointed him would be crushing. Or what Andy thought he was rubbish? What if he laughed at him?

Mood thoroughly killed, Tom dipped his head into the cold, clear water, and rinsed the soap from his hair. And then there was the wolf, he thought bitterly, there was always the wolf lurking there at the edge of everything. Would it be right for him to get into any kind of more than friends relationship with Andy without him knowing about it? On the other hand it was only for a few hours one night a month and it wasn't like Andy could catch being a werewolf from him unless he got bitten or scratched while he was a wolf, at which point him surviving the encounter was probably the bigger issue.

Tom sighed and rubbed his hand across his short cropped hair, feeling the thick scars on his scalp that he'd received during the attack that had turned him into a werewolf. Perhaps it would be safer if Andy never knew the truth. He was a nice bloke and he understood how life could sometimes be give you a rough hand, but expecting him to be fine with sharing a bed with a werewolf? That was asking too much anybody.

The best he could hope for if Andy found out what he was was being told to leave and never come back. The worse case scenario was that Andy reported it to somebody and government agency his dad had warned him about once caught him. He would end up locked in cell for the rest of his life. He knew some people would say that the worst option would be dying, but to be locked inside, seeing nobody but your jailers, never going out in the sun or walking through the woods again, that was worse than death in his mind.

After getting dressed, Tom walked slowly back to the farm, trying to convince himself that it would be for the best if nothing happened between him and Andy. That he should just accept the fact that he was just being stupid about wanting a normal life like people had rather than the weird, messed up approximation of one that unnatural things like him got to have.

It didn't work and by the time he reached his tent and dropped of his pack, Tom had decided that he should ask Andy if he wanted to go out for a drink and a meal. If Andy asked if it were a date as he'd done the previous time, he'd say yes, and hope like mad that everything would go okay from there. If Andy didn't ask he'd not lost anything, and there was always the possibility that perhaps if they had a few drinks he might get up the nerve to just kiss him and worry about the consequences later.

The farm was busy as Tom reached it, scaffolding being erected around the south facing sides barn and farmhouse, the men installing it talking loudly to each other as they lifted the metal poles into place.

Any idea finding a quiet moment and asking Andy out rapidly faded. They did need the panels, Tom told himself trying to be reasonable about it, but he'd not thought they'd been there for a few more days, that he'd have peace and quiet a bit longer. Disappointed, but trying not to show it walked over to Andy. "They're a bit early aren't they, so how long do they reckon it's gonna take?"

Andy gave him a baffled look. "It nearly ten, it's not that early. They said they should be done by late afternoon, although they'll have to come back later in the week with the storage battery for the house, as they one they brought will only work with the panels on the barn."

"That's good," Tom said, not entirely sure that it was the right answer. "But I thought they weren't 'spose to be here until next week."

"No, the nineteenth it's been on the calendar for ages, well at least since I rebooked it." He frowned. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Tom said faintly, the date feeling like a punch in the gut. How could it have crept up on his with out him noticing? A whole year since he'd found his dad, had lost him and had failed to kill the vampire that had taken him from him.

"You don't look it," Andy said, sounding worried as he took a step towards him.

"I just had a crap nights sleep, that's all," Tom replied, staring down at his feet, wanting nothing more than to be alone for a while.

"It's that bloody dog again," Andy said turning to look across the valley. "I reckon it's somebody with a holiday home, you hear it every few weeks."

"Yeah," Tom replied faintly, realising that he'd have to go further into the hills and mountains to change next time. If Andy could here him, so could other people and it was a scarily thin line in his mind between people hearing him and the wolf getting its teeth and claws into them. "Don't you like dogs, then?"

Before Andy could answer one of the men on the scaffolding on the house called out to him about where he wanted the wiring to come through the roof so the power supply could be connected properly.

"I just came to tell you that I'm going to go take a look at the wall along the edge of the wood, see if there's anything that needs doing," Tom said taking advantage of the fact that Andy was momentarily distracted."There ain't much I can do here while all that's up." He pointed at the scaffolding. "I'd only be in the way."

"If you're sure," Andy said, not sounding convinced. "If you need some more sleep, I don't mind. I can manage to watch other people work without hurting myself you know."

Letting Andy think he was tired seemed like a good idea, so he nodded and said, "Yeah. I might just do that."

The drystone wall at the edge of the wood was in need of repair, but after pulling half-heartedly at a few of the loose stones Tom gave up and sat down with his back again the time-worn, mossy stonework. Feeling more lost and alone than he had done in a long time and more desperately in need of advice from his dad about so many things in his life, Tom let the grief overwhelm him, the bright sunlit woodland blurring in a haze to tears around him.

Tom knew he must have fallen asleep at some point, as when he opened his eyes the shadows had grown long, the excessive heat of the day cooling as evening drew in. Looking down at the farmhouse from the wooded slopes of the hill he could see the scaffolding and the installation team were gone and the solar panels were in place. The dark blue and silver of the panels glinted in the evening sunlight, making them look strange and out of place against the slate roof of the old farmhouse. If it meant not having to rely on the noisy and smelly generator all the time he was happy to put up with them.

Walking back to the farmhouse, Tom hesitated at the door, not really wanting to go inside or feeling sociable. Leaning back against the ancient stonework of the farmhouse he looked out across the valley and sighed. He couldn't leave Andy alone any longer than he already had done, it wasn't fair. He should ask how the installation went, if there was any more work that needed to be done on the house or the barn. He should check to make sure that Andy hadn't over done things, and if he had, persuade him to actually take one of the painkillers the doctor had given him, even if they did seem to make him ridiculously sleepy.

"There you are," Andy said sounding relieved as Tom let himself into the house. Standing by the range, he put the lid back on the saucepan he'd he'd been stirring. "I was beginning to think you were avoiding me."

"No, I were just busy, that's all," Tom replied worried that Andy would notice how rough his voice sounded. It wasn't right to expect Andy to have to deal with him being upset, Tom thought, turning back towards the door. He wasn't completely better from his accident yet and he had enough of his own problems without having to hear about any more.

He heard the spoon Andy had been using to stir whatever was for dinner get dropped on the table and his obviously worried sharp intake of breath, and his shoulders slumped, there was no way he was just going to be able to get away without some form of explanation. Sitting down on the sofa, Tom waited for the inevitable questions that would follow.

TBC Sunday 22/9


	15. Chapter 15

Meeting Tom was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time, Andy thought as he started to get their evening meal ready. The past three weeks or so could have been so much worse if it hadn't been for him. Admittedly if it hadn't been for Tom he'd never have been trying to get the copper piping out of the old cowshed in the first place.

He'd have still had to deal with the terrible news about Nikki and Jonah Bevan though and without Tom he's not sure what he'd have done. Got through it somehow on his own, he supposed, as there wasn't really wasn't any other option in the end. How long it would have taken before he'd felt like facing the world again or with dealing with anybody or anything was debatable. He hoped it wouldn't have been as bad as the weeks following his suspension for pushing over his DCI, at that point getting dressed or even getting out of bed, guilt and fear about what he'd done, what people would say or what he might do sapping any energy or enthusiasm he had for anything.

He knew that if he'd been alone at the farm Gwen would have come over and tried to help. He also knew that he would have pretended that he was fine because she'd got more to put up with than he had. If it hadn't been for the accident he wasn't sure that he would have talked to Tom either. Knackering his ribs had forced him to accept help and to admit that, physically at least, he wasn't alright. And somewhere between the pain, the exhaustion of a few nights with very little sleep and the painkillers which had made him feel even more spaced out he'd just found himself talking to Tom about it. That Tom had listened, had understood, had cared enough to want to try to help him meant more than he could say.

The sun was low on the horizon when Andy finally heard the door open and Tom come into the house. Although he had his back to his, Andy could tell there was something wrong when there was no cheerful 'good evening' or 'what's for tea then?'

"There you are," Andy said, not caring how relieved he sounded. Standing by the range, he put the lid back on the saucepan he'd been stirring, before turning round. "I was beginning to think you were avoiding me."

There was a pause before Tom answered, sounding upset and unwilling to talk to him."No, I were just busy, that's all."

It was too reminiscent of when Tom hadn't been speaking to him, those days that had actually made him more miserable than even the bruised ribs had. "Whatever I've said I'm sorry," Andy said, sitting down beside him, his ribs still aching a little as he'd pushed himself harder that day with helping the solar panel installers. "Now are you going to tell me what I've done wrong?"

"You've not done anythin'." Tom looked away, but Andy still had time to see his eyes were red and puffy.

"Tom?" Andy felt nerves and worry starting to claw at him. What had he missed? If it wasn't him, what else was it? Had Tom been into town? Maybe the woman at the shop had said she didn't want any more carvings. That didn't seem likely though, they'd sold well, and even if she had Tom would have just told him and probably asked him if there was somewhere else he could try. It worried him that he couldn't think what it could be, that despite living for weeks with Tom in such close company that he didn't know him well enough to know what was upsetting him. "What's happened? Whatever it is you can tell me."

"I were so busy I forgot, didn't I?" Tom rubbed his eyes with a grimy hand. "It were a year ago the other night that me dad died. I'd meant to go back to where he's buried and make sure it's all tidy like and just tell him what I've been doing. How I've got a proper job like he wanted me to."

"I'm sorry," Andy said, at a loss at what else to say, feeling guilty himself now that he'd not connected it to how upset had been when he'd asked about the tattoo just after they first met. "Why don't you take a few days off, just go back to..." He stopped realising that Tom hadn't said where it had happened. "To go wherever you need to go."

Tom shook his head. "No. I'd feel right rubbish goin' there late. He wouldn't have minded me missing it, he knew all the stuff like gravestones and that where really for them whose left behind. He'd have just said, 'what's done is done, no point being all wet about it.' But that don't make me feel no better, 'specially not as it's sort of my fault in a way he got killed in the first place."

Andy knew all to well the sound of grief and guilt talking, you couldn't spend the best part of ten years in the police force giving people bad news without hearing just about every variation of it. Tom's sounded all too like the kind of thing you got from people where they'd claim it was all their fault because they hadn't told whoever had died not to go to the shops or walk the dog, because if they wouldn't have been killed by a car that skidded on a patch of ice or a tree falling on them. You couldn't really reason with that kind of guilt, because while it was technically true there was no way anybody could have foreseen what would happen. They weren't ready to hear that though, because as terrible as the accident was, finding somebody to blame, even if it was themselves, was easier than acknowledging that sometimes truly awful stuff happens to people for no reason and there's no way you can foresee or prevent it.

Tom looked so miserable though that Andy knew he couldn't just leave it at that, couldn't leave him to suffer as he obviously had been doing, in silence. Not when Tom had sat and talked to him so many times when things had been getting him down and he'd had nothing to do but think and be too sore to move about and find a distraction. He patted Tom's leg, trying to mix getting his attention with some level of comfort, then said, "How about I get us a cup of tea and you can tell me about it?"

"There ain't much to tell. He'd hurt his leg, and I reckoned he'd be safest staying at this old hotel with some people we'd met when they'd needed our help with some stuff." He rubbed his hand across his eyes again. "Only he weren't and maybe if I'd listened to him, if I'd let him just get over in the van liked he'd wanted, I've still have me dad."

"You can't know that," Andy said, wondering not for the first time just what sort of life Tom and his father had lived. If perhaps Tom's dad had been on the run from the law or from some criminal element. He wanted to think that it was simpler than that, that perhaps the late lamented McNair senior had just been a hippy type free spirit who thought a life on the open road free from obligations was the best life for him and his son. He wanted to believe it, but somehow he never quite could. It felt like there was something vital he was missing about the situation, but he just couldn't piece together what it was.

Tom sighed and then said unconvincingly, "I 'spose. But I still can't help thinkin' it, can I?"

"I guess not." Andy gave his shoulder a squeeze. "I make us that tea." When in doubt hot, overly sweet tea was the way to go. That and adding a generous slug of whisky to it, Andy thought picking up a bottle from one of the shelves and returning with it to the sofa.

After handing Tom his tea, Andy gestured towards the mug with the bottle. Tom nodded, still looking utterly miserable, so Andy added some to his drink before the same to his own.

Tea with whisky soon changed to just whisky drunk from the same battered cups as Andy didn't have the inclination to get up and make any more tea and Tom didn't seem to care either way. Silence at first had given way to conversation, the stories of his life with his dad, were by turns touching, sad and funny, and Andy knew that even if he hadn't been attracted to him before he'd definitely be heading that way now.

"You're the best friend I've ever had," Tom said, sounding more than a little the worse for wear. "Don't think I ever really had a best friend before. It's nice. You're nice."

"Oh Tom," Andy said quietly. There was something heartbreaking in the way Tom said it, like he'd not even thought he'd ever have a friend. Tom made him feel protective in a way Andy hadn't really thought himself to be, even though Gwen had often told him he was. Not that Tom needed protecting, he was more than capable of taking care of himself, the fight outside the pub had shown him that. But Andy knew all too well that things didn't have to have a physical original to be hurtful or damaging. Tom seemed to have such limited experience of dealing with people, of

"I meant I've had a few friends, but not ones I could really talk to about things." He picked at the frayed edge of his shorts. "I 'spose Annie was sort of like one, but she were always a bit like a mum too, I 'spose. I never had a mum, but Annie'd be tellin' me to help tidy up, eat my vegetables and makin' sure I didn't stay out too late. But there were things that me dad said you shouldn't talk to ladies about, an' she didn't like hearing about some of the stuff me and me dad used to do, so sometimes it were a bit hard to talk some things. It weren't her fault though."

He sniffed wetly, rubbed his eyes and then finished the whisky left in his mug. "She'll have been gone a year too, well in a few months, her and little Eve. She were a lovely little thing, all smiley and funny. She'd have bin one soon. I'd have made sure she'd have had the best party ever. With cake and balloons and everything."

Just when he'd thought he'd heard the worst, Tom came out with another revelation about life that was even more upsetting and depressing, Andy thought putting his arm around him. Between the drink and everything else he'd put up with lately, he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop himself from shedding a few tears as well. "I'm so sorry. Was she..." Andy swallowed hard, the question sticking in his throat. "Was she your daughter?"

Tom gave him a wide eyed, shocked look. "Of course not, I weren't married, were I? She were George and Nina's baby, but me and Annie looked after her when they died. She were like a sister I 'spose, a lovely little sister. I never had a family. I always wanted one. My dad said we'd find one one day, but it were a lie."

It wasn't the time to point out that babies didn't only happen when people were married and Andy poured more whisky for them both. Part of him knew that they'd probably had more than enough, the other said that they needed this, that if this was what it took for Tom to open up about his past, if it helped him at all then it was worth inevitable hangover he'd have in the morning.

"Things weren't all bad, sometimes thing were good. Like Hal," Tom continued, not seeming to have heard him. "I were friends, I think we were. I really liked him, well when he was off the blood um bloody stuff, yeah that what I meant, stuff."

"It's alright," Andy said, wanting Tom to know that he could tell him anything. "I'm not police now, am I? I'm not going to report him. So if you want you can tell me."

"Nah, it's not like that, it weren't like what he did were exactly illegal. Well I 'spose it were,kind of sometimes, just depended on how it got it. It just made him into a right knob when he did." Tom smiled, sad and fond at the same time. "He were just all weird the rest of the time, sometimes it were a bit annoying, but it were kinda nice sometimes though as well. So I do miss him. Just sitting on the sofa watching telly or working in the cafe, or just talkin' about stuff."

Andy wondered why it had never occurred to him that Tom might be lonely at the farm. It seemed suddenly very selfish to have imagined that his own company would be enough. Tom was young, he should be out living his life, making all those stupid, wonderful, embarrassing memories that you could look back on when you were older and hopefully wiser, and realise that given half the chance you'd do them all over again. "You know you don't have to stay here, if you're lonely you could go out or something."

"But I like it here with you, it's nice." Closing his eyes, Tom settled against him, head resting against his shoulder. "You're nice. Friendly. You smell nice and friendly."

Andy sighed, wishing that he circumstances were different. It was just his luck that by the time Tom started showing any affection towards him he'd be at the overly friendly, talking complete bollocks stage of being drunk. He'd be lying if he'd said having Tom leaning against him, his arm warm loosely draped across his lap, wasn't turning him on. He also knew that he'd be the worse friend in the world if he tried it on now. He'd be taking advantage of him, of his grief and loneliness, and that would be a pretty shitty thing to do even if Tom weren't drunk. The fact that he was, even though it hadn't quite got to the point where he was incapable, would make it verging on the criminal. "Come on you'd have some water before you go to sleep," Andy said, reluctantly lifting Tom's arm off him, and getting up. "Or your going to have one hell of a hangover in the morning."

"I don't get them," Tom mumbled, curling up on the sofa and closing his eyes. "I don't think it lets me, not like colds, don't understand colds. Dad said makes you stronger...and didn't drink before the moon, but it's after, so it's all alright."

Definitely more than a little bit out of it, Andy thought a drunken laugh bubbling up, as he realised that now he was upright the room seemed to be a lot fuzzier and more moving than it had been when he was sitting down. Walking into the corner of the table as he went to get Tom some water, Andy put his finger to his lips and shushed at the can of cola that had been on it fell over and rolled onto the floor.

Still laughing at himself, Andy managed to get more water on himself than in the mug, before walking with exaggerated care back to Tom.

"I am so, so drunk," Andy said, as he tried to put the mug on the table and missed. "I should have kissed you."

Tom blinked and looked bleary eyed at him. "Why'd yer miss me? I haven't gone anywhere, have I?"

"No, I said..." Andy stopped, hating the fact that even now he couldn't say it. "I said I'd miss you if you went."

Yawning, Tom closed his eyes again, and mumbled,"But I don't wanna go, wanna stay here with you forever."

"And I want you to," Andy replied, although the only response he got was a snore. Sitting down on the floor by the sofa, he looked at Tom and sighed. "Why am I so useless that I just can't tell you that?"

TBC Wednesday 25/9


	16. Chapter 16

Trying to wake himself up coffee had been a really stupid idea, Tom thought miserably as he sat on the ground next to the outside toilet, hoping that he wasn't about to be sick again. Drinking the amount whisky he'd done previous night had been a stupid idea too, he decided as he closed his eyes in an attempt to stop the pounding in his head. All it did was make you feel awful and leave you nothing but hazy, disjointed memories of the previous evening.

"Are you alright? Have you been out here all night?"

Tom opened his eyes to see Andy leaning against the wall next to him. Bleary eyed and squinting in the bright morning sun, Tom thought he looked as rough as he felt. Thinking felt like wading through treacle and it took a moment for him to answer, replying, "Yes and no, I think."

"Huh?" Andy gave him a baffled look and then sat down heavily next to him. "Don't you know?"

Tom closed his eyes again, before attempting to answer. "I weren't out all night." He's pretty sure he wasn't outside all night. It had been light when he'd tried to make the coffee or at least not when he'd had to hurry outside. He'd planned on asking Andy if he'd wanted any, but he'd been asleep, still dressed and sprawled across the covers on top of his bed. "And I don't think I'm gonna be sick again. Not if I don't move."

"That's good." Andy leant sideways, a warm, heavy weight against Tom's shoulder. "I'm not sure yet. Not about me. I think I might still be drunk. Just a bit."

"Try not to do it on me," Tom said, knowing that if he did, he'd soon follow.

Andy gave a mumble in response before lapsing into silence.

When he hadn't said anything for a a few minutes, Tom nudged at his arm with his shoulder. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah. Thinking."

"About what? I didn't say owt stupid last night, did I?"

"Some stuff," Andy replied after a pause.

Hoping it wasn't too embarrassing or anything about the wolf, Tom said, "Like what?"

Andy opened his eyes and looked at him. "You said you don't get hangovers. Looks like you were wrong."

"Were that all?" Tom asked relieved that he'd not made a complete idiot of himself or if he had Andy didn't remember it either. "There weren't anything else, were there?"

"Don't think so. I don't really remember what I said, never mind anything I was told."

Despite his pounding headache Tom could hear the lie in Andy's voice. It hadn't been there before when he'd asked about what he'd said, so he was fairly sure that Andy was lying about something he'd said to him and now regretted it. He wished that he could remember, but thinking too hard made the throbbing in his head worse, so he stopped.

They sat in silence for a while longer before Andy said, "We should probably try to eat something. We might feel better if we did."

"Yeah," Tom agreed with absolutely no conviction at all. Moving seemed like a very bad idea. Sitting completely still until his head felt less likely to explode was definitely a better one.

"Do you want to get something now? The sausage and beans thing I made last night should be alright on toast"

Tom thought about it from a moment, just the idea of food made him feel queasy. His shook his head careful to keep the movements to a minimum."No."

"Later then," Andy replied sounding more relieved than disappointed

"Later," Tom agreed, resting his head against Andy's shoulder. "Definitely later."

x0x0x0x

The sky was already cloudless, the temperature and humidity climbing to what Tom suspected would become uncomfortably levels by late afternoon as he'd made his along the winding footpaths that lead up to high point at Coed y Foel. Over looking the both the Caban Coch and Garreg-Ddu reservoirs as well as the Elan and Claerwen valleys it was the place to start his search for somewhere more isolated to change or to just sit and think.

It had taken him until early afternoon to feel like doing anything more than sitting or lying still, but by the time they'd finally eaten and Andy had retreated back to his bedroom, headachy and undecided if the food was going to stay down for long, Tom had started to feel restless. It had been that restlessness combined with the need to clear the last of the fuzziness from his mind that had driven him to start walking.

He didn't know if it was because he'd lived so much of his life outdoors or whether it was because of the wolf that he felt at home there, either way he felt better there. Given a choice of where to be outside he preferred woodland. The was something about it, seeing everything from the towering ancient trees to the new seedlings growing in the space where one of the old trees had fallen. Everything fitted together, found ways of living together. You could feel the age of the place, know that it had been since time immemorial, and would continue to be there, if you just left if in peace.

He wondered if the wolf liked it there, whether it cared for anything other than the hunt or the chase. He didn't know much about what the wolf liked despite it having been part of him for the whole of his remembered life. Its need for space and for freedom though he could feel. He'd changed in a confined space before, when there'd been no other safe option, but it had always felt different afterwards, like he'd still had too much energy, a restlessness filling him that didn't seem to ease until the next time he transformed and could run free once more.

Reaching the top of Coed y Foel, Tom sat down and looked out and looked out at the shining curves of the reservoirs below. The hot summer sun sparkling on the water, while there was nothing to be heard but the faint sounds of nature living it's life undisturbed around him. It was, he though relaxing against the stone cairn on that had been sited on the highest a spot for hiker to use to get their bearings, just about as perfect as it was likely to get for being a werewolf or for getting away from the world.

There was less woodland around the Elan Valley than he would have liked, but there was something about the openness of the moorland, the wide skies and rolling rough grasses that promised freedom. Yet even in the bright summer sun there was a bleakness to it, an emptiness that was at once both liberating and frightening in its isolation.

Not that there was much summer left really, Tom realised, as he looked down at the woods in the valley bottoms, the trees growing thick and close to the banks of the reservoirs. The rowan and elder trees and the bramble bushes he'd past on his walk up had already been heavy with fruit, and he suspected that if he'd looked hard enough he'd have seen hazels and oak, their branched weighed down nuts. His dad had always said that it meant it was going to be a long, cold winter.

Transforming out here when it was in depths of winter when snow was thick on the ground and the temperatures were falling away to well below freezing would be a terrible idea. The wolf would be happy enough running in the snow, but he definitely wouldn't be. Changing back naked and potentially miles from his clothes would make hypothermia a frighteningly real possibility. No, Tom thought worriedly, he'd have to tell Andy what he was before the weather got that bad. Either that or find somewhere secure to change and make up an excuse why he was going out in such horrible weather, as there wasn't anywhere he could used on the farm. The coal cellar in the house would do as a last resort, he supposed, although he would have to get Andy to pile things up in front of the door to make sure he didn't get out.

Tom sighed, even the bright sunlight sparkling on the waters of the Caban Coch reservoir far below failed to lift his spirits. Andy being fine with what he was was an impossible dream. What normal person would want a werewolf in their life, never mind their bed?

He really did want to be in Andy's bed as well as his life. He was in love with him, Tom was sure of that. Not that he'd got much experience of being in love or having relationships, but he was as certain as he could be that what he felt to him was love. He worried about him if he looked sick or tired or hurt, he wanted to see him smile and laugh, wanted to know that he was happy, wanted to talk with him and listen to him, to just be with him in general, to be in his life and for that to never, ever change.

Perhaps if Andy fell in love with him first, if he felt the same way he did, then maybe it wouldn't matter he spent a few hours a month as a werewolf. He sighed again. Or maybe it would make him hate him even more than if he'd told earlier. Losing Andy after having any kind of life together was too horrible to contemplate. But the idea of not trying to have that life, not giving it as chance was terrible too. It would be as good as admitting that he'd never have anyone, that the wolf always won in the end, no matter what you did.

Why did life have to be so confusing? Tom wondered, getting up and heading down to the shore of the reservoir, knowing that he needed the distraction of walking before he started to over think things. Or was it under thinking them that was the problem, he thought as he followed the path down through the woods, was it that he just wasn't bright enough to understand what would have been obvious to everybody else?

It was quiet on the shore when he reached it, the weather feeling hotter and more humid now he come down from the hills. There was a closeness in the air that Tom associated with storms, although the sky was still blue and cloudless, and he doubted there would be any relief from the heat in the form of rain any time soon.

It would be cooler in the water, he decided, so after checking that there wasn't anybody around, Tom left most of his clothes on the shore and waded into the water. Never dive into places like this had been his dad's advice when he'd decided that it was time to teach him to swim, you don't know how deep it is or how cold, it's just asking for trouble. Is was good advice too, Tom thought feeling the water, cool to the point of cold where it was fed by upland streams, swirling about his legs. He definitely wouldn't be doing this any when other than the middle of summer.

Some time later, sitting on the shore, the golden evening sunlight still hot enough to dry him, Tom wondered if Andy had ever come up here to swim or if he even knew the reservoirs were there, as he seemed to rarely leave the farm. It would do him good, Tom decided to get out of the house for a while, to do something other than work on the farm. He could ask him to go swimming with him tomorrow.

Tom smiled at the idea. Perhaps if they went swimming together, something which would mean were little to nothing in the way of clothes, it would be easier to tell him how much he liked him.  
Maybe if it was still really hot and sunny maybe he could offer to rub sun cream on his back. He'd seen that in a film Alex had been watching once, the man and woman had...well it wouldn't have been a film his dad would have approved of him watching he was certain of that. He'd gone red and Alex had called him cute, while Hal had seemed more concerned about how the sand would stick to the sun cream, his horrified expression and his whispered, 'but the chafing' had meant they'd all ended up laughing, any embarrassment forgotten.

Even if it didn't work, Tom told himself as he got ready to walk back to the farm, he'd still get to spend time with Andy, which could only be a good thing.

From the far side of the reservoir it was a long walk back to the farm and it was late by the time he reached it, the sun long set despite the light summer evenings. The farmhouse was quiet and dark, the only light on was was in Andy's bedroom and Tom hesitated at the door. It wasn't fair to wake Andy up to say that he wanted to say for longer and to ask him if he wanted to go for a swim tomorrow.

He would talk to him in the morning, Tom decided heading down the path to the side of the farm that lead to his tent on the edge of the woods. He'd have a good think about what to say, plan it out so he didn't make a mess of it. Smiling and looking forward to the morning, Tom got into his tent as the first drops of rain began to fall and thunder rumbled across the valley.

TBC Sunday 29/9

* * *

Notes  
Apologies for the lateness of this part. Sunday's part will appear on time (I've already got most of it written), and yes, Tom and Andy will finally do something about what they're feeling for each other.

The description of the Elan Valley and the place names come from both google maps and the Clwyd-Powys archaeological trust's information (which has a lot of lovely pictures) . #1132 Elan Village


	17. Chapter 17

A sharp crack of lightning followed almost immediately by the deep rumble of thunder woke Andy from where he'd fallen asleep, reading and waiting for Tom to return. Lying in bed, he could hear to the rain hammering against the slate roof and the wind rushing over the top of the chimney. Outside, another flash of lightening lit up the farmyard, the cobbled surface looking more like a pond than a somewhere he'd sat with Tom just a few hours earlier.

Tom. Andy got up and looked into the living room; it was silent and empty. Returning to his room, he peered out into the rain soaked night. Surely Tom wouldn't still be in his tent in weather like this? Yet where else would he go if not to the house?

Worry gnawed at him. Had he even got back from his walk? Why had he not asked him where he was going or when he'd be back? Every worse case scenario suddenly felt a hundred times more likely than him just having decided to shelter in the barn rather than come in late and wake him. Knowing that there was no chance of getting back to sleep while Tom's whereabouts were unknown, Andy put on his boots, picked up a torch from the shelf next to the door and went out into the night.

The rain was torrential and Andy was soaked to the skin before he'd even got a dozen paces from the door. There was no sign of Tom in the barn and Andy tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to push down the fear that something was terribly wrong. The knowledge that Tom was used to being outdoors and was probably better prepared for any eventuality of the weather than just about anyone he knew didn't help in the slightest. The torch flickered, as he went back out into the rain, its light not going as far as he would have liked as he carefully made his way down the slippery stone paved path to where Tom had pitched his tent.

"Tom!" Andy called out as he looked around. Blinking the cascading water ineffectually from eyes, he shouted again. "Tom, where are you!"

The hollow where Tom's tent had been glinted in the torchlight, water standing a couple of inches deep across it. Running forward, something caught round Andy ankle, nearly tripping and he gave startled yell and he stumbled back. Heart hammering in his chest, he looked down to find that what had tripped him had been one of the guide ropes for Tom's tent. There was no sign of Tom though, the tent seeming to collapsed at some point earlier in the night, and which was now lying in an empty and forlorn heap in the rain and mud.

Shining the torch into the rain-soaked night Andy looked around wildly, panic threatening to engulf him. Where could he be? What if lost his way coming back to the farm? Or if he'd slipped and fallen? He could be hurt and the water was deep enough in places that if he was lying face first he could have… Andy closed his eyes, a shiver running through him. He remembered all too clearly an incident he'd been called to when he'd barely been on the force six months. A rough sleeper who had a reputation as being an alcoholic had been found dead in the gutter, after apparently having fallen into a drunken stupor during a thunderstorm. The water had been barely six inches deep. It was hardly the same, but it fuel the fear none the less.

"Tom!" he called out again, hurrying as fast as he could in the gloom, water swirling round his feet as he headed for the trees that ran at the foot of the slope. "Tom, are you out here?"

"I'm 'ere," Tom called out as he got up from where he'd been sitting beneath a tree. Wearing nothing apart from his underwear and his tatty, ancient waxed jacket, he still looked like the best sight Andy had ever seen.

Feeling weak with relief, Andy rushed across the last few feet that separated them and wrapped his arms around him. He could deal with any awkwardness later, he told himself, right now he needed to know that he was real, alive and safe if he was going to stop shivering any time soon.

Tom froze for a moment, then hugged him back, holding him close long past the point where Andy thought he'd let go. "What you doing out here?" Tom asked eventually, relaxing his grip but not letting go entirely. "It's a right rotten night."

"Looking for you," Andy said, glad that yet another rumble of thunder helped to hide how much his voice shook. "Come on. Let's get back to the house."

Slipping and sliding on mud and wet cobbles, Andy's torch having finally given up under the torrential onslaught of the rain, they eventually made it back along the track to the farmhouse. The living room was in darkness when Andy opened the door and flicking the light switch did nothing to solve it. Hoping that it was just water having tripped the fuse box, rather than any having got into the storage battery for the solar panels and shorted it out, Andy said, "I'll get a candle."

Feeling his way along the edge of the table, knowing that from there the dresser with its drawers containing candles and matches were just a few more feet, Andy forgot about the rug between the table and the sofa. His foot caught beneath it and for the second time that night, Andy felt himself falling. Reaching for the table and missing, he landed backwards on the floor with an undignified yelp.

"You okay?" Tom asked, moving carefully towards him. "You want a hand getting up?"

"Yeah," Andy replied, feeling more stupid than anything else, as nothing seemed to hurt. Taking hold his hand after a couple of attempt to find in it the dark, Andy was almost on his feet when Tom tripped on the same edge of the rug he had and pulled them back down.

Having Tom wet, warm, heavy and moving on top of him was too much and Andy bit his lip, all too aware that a certain part of his body was starting to react in a very interested way. "Tom..." Andy began hoping that he wouldn't take offence or be too embarrassed.

"It's alright," Tom said, a grin growing on his face. "I really like you too. I weren't sure you did, not like that, but I'd hoped and I were going to ask eventually. I'd got it all planned out like, it's what I went out to think about today, how to tell you."

It was too dark to say their eyes met, but Andy had no doubt that Tom knew what he's doing as he leant down and kissed him. It was eager and just a little bit rough, his obvious inexperience making him clumsy. It was wonderful though as far as Andy was concerned, it was everything he'd hoped for but hadn't dare to ask for out of fear of rejection.

It had been far too long since he'd been with anybody, especially somebody he cared about so much, and while he'd never really expected to end up having sex with Tom on the living room floor, Andy decided he was definitely in favour of the idea right now. He ran a hand down Tom's chest, stopping when he reached his underwear, palming the erection straining against the rain-soaked cotton.

What he hadn't expected was Tom to freeze, a surprised gasp breaking their kiss. "What wrong?" Andy said, brain trying to function through a haze of arousal.

"Nothing, it's just that I ain't sure what I'm 'sposed to do next. I mean, I sort of know... " He trailed off sounding embarrassed. "There were this girl, well woman, Allison showed me some stuff on her computer, when we were thinkin' about doing this, but we never did do more an' kiss in the end. An' I don't know what you like doing."

"You've never..." Andy trailed off, stomach doing a flip that was definitely more nerves than desire. That Tom would be a virgin had never entered his head. Inexperienced, perhaps, but at twenty one he'd assumed that there would have been someone, that he'd have done something. It was more than a little daunting to realise just how much Tom was offering him.

When he'd failed to respond, Tom's face fell, his hands still under Andy's t-shirt falling still. "I've scared you off, ain't I? I've done this all wrong and I shouldn't have said anything about not knowing what I'm doing, you're going to think I'm right rubbish now."

"No, it's not that," Andy said quickly, having Tom blaming himself "It's just I've never been with anybody who hasn't, well you know, done it before. Are you really sure you want to do this? I mean here, now, with me."

"Of course I want it, I've wanted it for ages," Tom said earnestly. "My dad said I should wait until I found the right one, well he said girl, but I think he meant person. He were always a bit vague about stuff like this. Took me ages to figure of that it weren't real birds and bees he were talkin' about. I'm always doing stuff like that, not getting it. But I get this, get you, so what I'm try to say is that it's you, that you're the right person, the one I've been waiting for. The right one for me. " He smiled, nervous and eager. "I should probably stop talking now, 'cause I'm making a right idiot of myself here, ain't I?"

"No, you're not. Not an idiot, never that," Andy said kissing again him before Tom could start putting himself down any more. He wasn't sure Tom ever saw what he was doing as that, but he still didn't like to have to hear it. "I think we should get up, get into bed."

"Yeah, that's probably better than here on the floor, it ain't right comfortable, is it?"

Finding their way to the bedroom without tripping over anything else, Andy lit the candle in the lantern on the bedside table, a left over from before he got the generator running reliably.

With their wet clothes left in a pile on the floor, they climbed onto the bed. It still wasn't Hollywood romance perfect, Andy thought, but the ancient cottage, the flickering candlelight and them safe and warm inside from the storm raging overhead, would, he hoped, be more memorable that his own first time; a drunken fumble on a friend's sofa after spending the evening celebrating not failing his A-levels.

"So are we going to do it now?" Tom asked, eagerly, moving closer to him."I was thinking we do what you liked best and we can see if I like it too?"

"I don't know," Andy said doubtfully, torn between what he'd like and making tonight as good for Tom as he could. Giving him a blowjob would work, but what could Tom do back? He didn't think Tom would go for it being a one way thing. Nor did it seem fair to expect him to return the favour, not when his own first experience of that had been stunningly awkward and embarrassing for both parties as they'd lasted about ten seconds and he'd nearly ended up being sick. Asking him to just use his hand ran the risk of making Tom feel like he didn't trust him to do anything else right. The last thing he wanted to happen tonight was to hurt his feelings.

The best solution was to get Tom to fuck him, Andy decided, feeling the flex of muscles in Tom's thigh, where it was pressed against his. Most young men's expectation was that sex, when they finally got some, was going to involve part of their anatomy going into somebody else and fun things happening all round. It was probably fair to assume, Andy thought, that Tom's would be too. It had nothing to do with the fantasy of Tom, with all that lean, hard muscle from a life on the move and weeks of hard physical work, screwing him through the mattress that had been the subject of a couple of very pleasurable dreams. Not at all.

"Well what's the other choice?" Tom said when he hadn't answered, sounding rather frustrated. "Try something you don't like and see if I do? 'cause that sounds right daft."

Put that way it really was, Andy though as he laughed and rolled on top of him, kissing him. "I want you to have sex with me."

"I know that, but how do you want...Oh you mean back there," Tom said flushing slightly and running his hand down Andy's back.

Relief that he wasn't about to have to explain the concept of anal sex to Tom, really didn't cover it, Andy thought, as he nodded.

"I looked it up you know, after I pretended to be Hal's boyfriend. It got me thinkin' about things, about what kind of things people did, if they were both men and..." Tom said, face flushing even more. "There were videos an' everything. But I never had the sound on, 'cause I didn't want Annie to hear and come in and see me, well you know, so I don't know if I missed owt important."

"That's nice, thinking of doing it, of looking it up I mean," Andy said, the idea of Tom who was so easily embarrassed by anything to do with sex actually looking at porn, leaving him both flustered, and if possible, even more turned on. Glad to have a distraction, Andy rolled off him to locate condoms and lube in the bedside cupboard.

Handing Tom the condoms, Andy took a few moments to work some lube into himself. He'd get Tom to do it some other time he told himself, as right now if it were Tom doing it he doubted he'd be able to hold back long enough until he was inside him. Then, taking pity on Tom who'd managed to mangle the foil packet on the first condom he'd tried to open, got one open for him.

"Let me," Andy said, removing it from the foil. Received a relief nod and smile from Tom, he'd leant forwards and kissed him, while carefully rolling it on.

"How do you want me to do it?" Tom asked, managing to sound eager and self-conscious at the same time, once Andy had added some extra lube to the condom.

"It's probably best if I kneel on the bed with you behind me," Andy said. They could try something more bendy once they were a bit more familiar which what they liked and his ribs were fully healed, he decided, getting into position. Not that his ribs were really giving him any trouble now, but leaving it another week or two before really pushing them wouldn't be a bad idea.

"Right then, here goes," Tom said moving behind him. Steadying himself with one hand against Andy's hip and the other holding the end of condom in place, he thrust in hard.

It was too much, too fast and Andy gasped, eyes watering."Tom, stop a minute."

Tom froze and rubbed his hand across Andy's back. "Did I do it wrong?" he asked, sounding scared. "I've not hurt you have I? Do you want me to try it again or something?"

Andy closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing his body to adjust to the feeling of Tom inside him. It had been a long time since he'd last done this and his body was telling him a little more prep might not have been a bad idea. The desire for Tom was still there though and with the discomfort thankfully rapidly starting to fade, Andy said, "I'm okay. It was just a bit too quick, that's all."

"Are you sure I didn't hurt you?" Tom asked again, voice sounding strained from holding back. "I don't wanna hurt you."

"I'm alright." Andy took another breath, then taking hold of Tom's hand which had been on his back brought it round to his cock. Curling his fingers over Tom's, he said, "Just move with me for now, you'll know when I can take more."

Tom leant forwards and kissed his back. "Alright, just tell me if I start getting it wrong again."

What Tom lacked in experience he more than made up for in enthusiasm, strength and stamina, Andy thought a few minutes later as he twisted his fingers into the bed covers, seeking purchase. He was going to feel it in the morning he was sure, his thigh and stomach muscles were already starting to protest from the strain, but he felt so high on life he couldn't bring himself to care. They were past the point where discomfort was registering, everything was sensation, the need for harder, faster and more, oh hell yes more, overwhelming everything else.

Desperate to come, Andy pushed back against him, until his knee slipped on the covers. The change of angle, the shift of sensations was enough to push him over the edge. Panting and trembling from exertion, Andy let himself topple forwards on the bed, as he shuddered through his climax. Behind him Tom's movements became erratically until he came as well, fingers digging into his hips, teeth biting into his shoulder hard enough to bruise.

Breathless, sticky and feeling pleasantly well used, Andy lay still enjoying the closeness of having Tom draped across his back, the rush of his breath against his neck and the tickle of the wet, sloppy kisses he was planting across his shoulders.

There was a slight twinge of discomfort when Tom pulled out so he could dispose of the condom, but all in all, Andy decided as he rolled over so that he could see Tom again, it had been a pretty spectacular night.

"That were amazin'" Tom said lying back down, facing him. Propping himself up on one elbow, looked at him with tired, happy smile on his face. "I'm so glad I waited until it were with you."

There wasn't anything Andy found he could say to that. Certainly nothing that wasn't going to end up being ridiculously sappy or emotional, so he pulled him close and kissed him instead, letting it convey more than he could ever put into words about just how much he'd come to love him.

TBC Wednesday 2/10


	18. Chapter 18

Bright morning sunlight was already streaming in through the window when Tom woke. Beside him in bed Andy was still asleep, his head tipped back slightly on the pillows, snoring softly, the bed covers pushed down to barely cover his hips

Tom looked at him and smiled. He'd had sex. Actual real sex with Andy and it had been brilliant. It hadn't been exactly like he'd thought it would be, the videos hadn't been all that accurate in the end, but he supposed that was because they were sort of like films. It was like how they got werewolves wrong in just about all of them. It had been embarrassing looking at the videos at first, but with all the people in them being men he'd eventually decided it was okay. His dad had told him not to look at magazines or things with women with little or nothing on in them, that those sort of magazines or film were degrading towards women and reading them was agreeing that things like that was acceptable. He'd never said anything about men being naked in things, so in the end he'd come to the conclusion that it was probably alright to look at those.

He could probably have managed without watching them, Tom thought, but it had been useful in that he hadn't to ask what Andy had meant about certain things. There were probably still going to be load of things to find out, but he suspected that they'd have a great time doing it. Because knowing that he could make Andy feel as good as he had last night was a fantastic feeling and one that he wanted them both to feel again. That Andy seemed to want the same for him gave him a warm feeling inside.

Still smiling and feeling like that he might never stop, Tom slipped out of the bedroom. He'd get them some breakfast and them he'd ask Andy is they could try it the other way round.

"Someone's in a very good mood this morning."

Putting down the kettle on the top of the range, Tom turned to see Andy standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing nothing apart from pyjama bottoms.

"After last night I think I'm gonna be in a good mood forever," Tom said, happily. "You want tea or coffee?"

"Coffee or I'm going to fall asleep again," Andy replied. Yawning and rubbing a hand through his hair, he went over to the table and sat down.

The slight noise, a mix of discomfort and relief, Andy had made didn't escape Tom, and he felt concern slipping in. What if Andy had only pretended to have enjoyed last nice? What if his ribs were hurting again? The whole thing had been pretty energetic. Feeling like he should have asked the question the previous night, before they fell asleep, Tom said,"I weren't too rough, were I?"

"Not really. My legs are the worse of it, and they'll be fine once I've walked around for a bit," Andy said sounding unconcerned. "I'm just not used to kneeling like that, but hopefully that's going to..."

What Andy was saying faded to a background noise as Tom caught sight of his shoulder. High up on it, near to where it met his neck was a bruise - a bruise that could only have come from a bite. He swallowed hard, guilt and disgust at himself threatening to overwhelm him. How could he have allowed the wolf get into something that should have been private between just the two of them? And worse how could he have not realised until now what he'd done? "I bit you," Tom said faintly, horrified at what he'd done. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't…"

"Hey, it's okay. It'll be gone in a few days," Andy said putting his hand over Tom's. "We can all get bit carried away sometimes. It's natural."

"It is?" Tom said doubtfully, half convinced that Andy was only saying it to make him feel better. He didn't want to think that about him, that Andy would lie to him, because that thought always ended up being followed these days by the suspicion that they were tricking him about other things, that they were just using him. "'Cause I feel like I've messed everything up. You were so nice to me and I've hurt you, and I'm so sorry, an'..."

"Will you stop apologising?" Andy said, twisting round in the chair to look at him. "Last night was perfect, you were perfect."

"But you're sore. That can't be right," Tom protested. The certainty, the honesty in Andy's voice had been worse in a way that if there had been doubt there. It meant there was only one liar in their relationship and that was him.

"Sometimes it can be. Sometime rough can be good, if you're both in the mood for it," Andy said, sounding slightly embarrassed now. "Look I could have suggested that we tried a different position or I could have taken more time to get ready, but I wanted you last night, I wanted what we did." He smiled, open and honest. "I've got no regrets, well none apart from wishing I'd asked you weeks ago."

"But you would say if I were being a bit rough, wouldn't yer?" Tom said, . "I don't wanna hurt you. I'd hate that."

"Of course I'd tell you," Andy said, sounding surprised that he'd think that he wouldn't. "And I know that you'd listen, because you'd never do it on purpose." He stopped, gave Tom's hands a squeeze and then asked, "Now are you going to tell me what's wrong?"

I am, Tom thought miserably. He knew he should tell Andy about it, about what he was, but the words caught in his throat. He'd lose him if he told him the truth. There was a reason things like him had to hide what they were, why they had to live their entire life as a lie and that was survival. What Cutler had done, what he'd had tricked him into, had shown him that the world wasn't ready for what he was and maybe it never would be. They'd be hunted, imprisoned, experimented and killed all out of fear. And who wouldn't be afraid, Tom thought bitterly. He was monster as far as any normal person was concerned. Even the vampires saw werewolves less than normal people. "It's nothin,'" Tom said, pulling his hand away and looking down, scared for a moment that he might just cry at the unfairness of it all.

"Tom?"

"Guess I'm just a bit weird about biting and scratching and all that," Tom said, rubbing the top of the scars where they curled across the top of his shoulder and hoping that Andy would accept that as an answer. It was true to some extent, but it was such a tiny part of the truth that it still felt like a lie. He turned away too ashamed to look Andy in the eye.

"Your sca..." Andy stopped, then swore under his breathe at what he obviously perceived to be his own thoughtlessness. "I should have realised."

"You weren't to know," Tom said, moving away and trying to distract himself with making then a drink. "It don't matter. It's just me bein' daft."

Andy got up and followed him over to the range, where Tom had started to get them some tea. Putting his arms round him, he kissed the back of his neck. "It matters to me. You've listened to me ramble on about things when everything is getting me down. And I'd be a pretty crap boyfriend if I didn't care about you."

The teaspoon and the sugar that Tom had been about to put into his mug fell to the floor as he twisted round in Andy's arms. "Is that what we are? Boyfriends?"

"If you want us to be, I mean I want it," Andy said starting to sound flustered. "But its got to be both of us wanting it. You don't have to, if you don't want to. So don't feel like you have to if you're not ready for that."

Although Tom knew that having sex someone didn't automatically mean you were in a relationship with that person, he wasn't comfortable with the idea for himself and certainly he didn't want that to be the case with Andy. "Of course I do," he said, wrapping his arms about him and leaning up for a kiss. "It's all I want."

Andy kissed him, laughing a little as he did, his hands drifting lower. "Apparently it's not the only thing though."

Tom knew he'd gone red again, but he didn't care. Pressing himself closers against Andy he said, "I ain't the only one."

Breakfast eventually happened and Tom went out to pack up his tent and try to salvage the wet and muddy contents. The storm had cleared the air and while it was another warm, sunny day it wasn't the hot, sticky humidity of the previous one. So after almost talking himself out of it, in favour of just spending the day in bed, Tom had asked Andy whether he'd like to go to a swim in the reservoir with him.

He'd been less than keen on the idea, pointing out just how many accidental drownings happened from things like that, but they'd come to a compromise in the end. They walk down to where Tom had suggested they'd have a swim and have a picnic instead.

Ignoring the paths and walking over the fields and moorland to Coed Y Foel and then making their way down the rocky slopes would have been the most direct route, but heading through Elan village, picking up a few bits at the small corner shop, and then following the Elan river to where it joined the Caban Coch reservoir was easier and had just as good views.

From the massive dam at the lowest end of the Cabon Coch reservoir they followed the path that ran along the banks to where the wide sweep of the stone arched bridge separated the Caban Coch and Garreg Ddu reservoirs. It was more than just a bridge though, Tom knew from looking at the information in the Elan Valley park visitors centre, it was also the point where the water was fed into a system of underground pipes channels where it would, using nothing more than the power of gravity, start its long journey to provide water for Birmingham and other urban centres in the Midlands. The scale of it was mindboggling, Tom thought as they approached the bridge. He liked to think that his dad, being as he'd been a surveyor before the vampires had got him for the first time, would have been impressed with it too. He wished that he'd know about that part of his life before he'd died. Being able to go somewhere that his dad had helped make, he thought, would have helped on those days were his dad felt so far away.

Stopping at the small, copper domed building on the Elan Valley side of the bridge, Andy looked out over the water, "Wow. You know I had no idea about this place."

"You'd never even had a bit of a look around?" Tom asked, surprised that Andy hadn't explored even a little bit. It wasn't like the bridge was that remote, it carried a road across it, giving people access to the small church which had been rebuilt there after the valley had been flooded during the creation of the reservoirs.

"Not really that much of an outdoors sort of person," Andy said, shaking his head. "Never really thought I'd live anywhere other than the city, you know. I'd not been living out here that long before you found me, only about a month or so."

"Well if you want I can show you all round here. I've got a fair idea of where everything is out here now. We can stop on the other side of the bridge," Tom said, starting to cross it. "It's easier to get down to the water on the Claerwen side and we can decide whether we want to have a bit of an explore late on."

"Wait a minute," Andy said, getting his phone out of his pocket. A new one picked up on their last trip into Rhayader as a proper replacement for the one smashed a few weeks earlier. After scrolling through the settings for a few moments, he stood it on the wall and then hurried back to Tom.  
Putting his arm around him, he said, "Smile"

Tom had barely had time to stop looking surprised when the camera gave a small click and Andy hurried back to get it.

"Can I have a look?" Tom asked, when Andy returned with the phone.

"Sure." Andy turned the mobile so that Tom could see.

The screen on the back of the phone showed them standing together. Andy with his arm around him, smiling, the wind blowing his hair in all directions as he'd not had it cut for a while, and him looking at Andy surprised and happy rather than at the camera.

"Its got pretty good resolution, not sure how well it'll do inside or if it was dark, but

"It's great. Do you think you could print it?" Tom asked. It probably wasn't the time to admit that he couldn't ever remember having his photograph taken before, he decided. It was, most likely, just a bit too weird to drop into conversation and not expect Andy to want to know why.

"Okay, I need to see if it works with the printer," Andy said, putting the mobile back in its case. Then added, sound pleased, "It's got pictbridge, so no more hunting for the right cable."

Tom nodded. He was getting used to all the gadgets, but sometimes he found it was easier just to smile and nod rather than admit that he wasn't always entirely sure what they were talking about. It had been easier with Hal like that; he'd pretty much cut himself of from the world in the nineteen fifties.

Once they'd crossed the bridge and found a good place to stop, Tom took the picnic blanket out of the bag and spread it on the ground. If inside the house, with its furniture and slowly growing amount of technology was where Andy was most at home, then out here was where Tom felt like he belonged. Away from the complexities of the world, with the scent of the woodlands behind him, the wide open sky above and the sound of water trickling down the steeply wooded slopes to the side him into the rippling water in front, he could find peace. How much of that was down to the wolf he wasn't sure. It was hard separating the wolf from things, impossible perhaps. There was no part of his life that he remembered from before the wolf, and even if by some miracle he'd remembered those first few months of his life what had a toddler known about the world? Nothing.

Everything was still so confusing, he thought with a sigh. His dad had never seemed to have any doubts about anything, so that probably couldn't be explained by the wolf. He'd thought he'd feel grown up once he'd had his twenty first birthday, but he hadn't. Since then there'd been his first real job, his first kiss and now his first time having sex and he still didn't feel any different.

"Something is still wrong, isn't it?" Andy said lying on the picnic blanket, looking up at the sparse white clouds in the otherwise blue sky. "You're not starting to regret last night, are you?"

"No, of course not. It's guess just I thought I'd feel different," Tom said, lying down on the blanket next to him. He felt silly admitting it, but he trusted Andy not to laugh at him and maybe to even understand. "I dunno, like properly grown up or something. I mean I know I am, but sometimes...I ain't right good at this feelings stuff. I get all confused, but you know that, right?"

"No more so than I do." Andy rolled over to face him. "Do you know I used to think it was just me who was making it all up as I went along, that everybody else knew what they were doing, that I was going to be found out. Turned out that just everybody thought the same." Rolling back to stare up at the clouds once more, he sighed. "We were all just running scared."

It made a lot of sense, Tom thought, it would explain people did things that were strange and confusing. It didn't feel scary to him though, if anything it was a relief, it meant he was like everybody else, just a normal human person making their life up as they went along. It did get better in the end though, Tom thought as he said, "We're not running any more though, are we?"

"No, I guess we're not," Andy said as if he was realising it for the first time. He looked out over the water, eyes following the steeply rising wooded slopes to where the bare moorland began. "It's this place, you, me, us together." Andy turned back and smiled at him. "It feels like this was meant to be. It's home."

The little farmhouse in the hills and the wide open land around it had come to feel much like home as the van where he'd grown up with his dad and as much or maybe even more so than Honolulu Heights. As, although it felt a bit disloyal to think it, he'd only stayed there because he'd cared about the people there, the old bed and breakfast with its dodgy plumbing and heating and weird decorations hadn't really been more than an building in the end. Tom smiled back at him. "It's our home."

"Our home,"Andy repeated, pulling him in closer to kiss him. "Our home together."

TBC – hopefully on Wednesday.

* * *

Note.  
Apologies for the lateness of this part, I don't seem to have had time to do anything much this week at all beyond work and sorting out things that need doing round the house. Normal posting schedule of Sundays and Wednesdays should now resume.


	19. Chapter 19

How they got out of bed most days he wasn't sure, Andy thought with as smile, as he fixed up the battery powered light in the small makeshift extension they had built to house an indoor toilet. They were definitely still in the massively horny, couldn't keep their hands to themselves phase of a new relationship.

He'd probably had more sex the past few weeks than in the preceding year or two. Finding out what Tom liked, seeing Tom discover new things and finding out new things about himself too was a wonderful, if sometimes pleasantly tiring experience. When you had no interruptions, no work to go to and nothing that needed to be done by a certain time there was definitely the opportunity to explore a lot of possibilities.

He knew they had fallen behind a bit on his plans for renovating the farm house, but the weather had turned wet and cold almost as soon as autumn had started and showed no sign of letting catch a break. Part of him wanted to say screw opening the farm up as a camp site, they could live on his money, they could shut out the world and they'd be fine by themselves. The other, what he hoped was his more rational side, said that was just fear talking, that becoming hiding away, cutting himself off from friends and family wasn't a sensible coping mechanism and that failing to make plans for the future didn't actually help. He was grateful that most of the time and on most days that part of him was winning.

With the light fixed in place, Andy sat down on the box containing the tiles for when they eventually finished plastering the room. It amazed him sometimes, in quiet moments like this when there was time to think, just how much his life had changed in the months since his enforced retirement from the police.

Situational depression and generalised anxiety had been the diagnosis he'd been given at the time. They'd given him the statistics too, one in four people would experience some kind of depression in their life. For some people it was something that was life long while for others it might be a singular episode caused by grief, divorce or loss of a job. They'd explained to him at the time that much of what he was feeling was connected to his service in the police, that if he removed himself from that source of stress, it would be beneficial. The cynical part of him wondered now if they'd just been positioning him to accept the retirement.

Knowing that he'd never have to return to the police station, never had to see the people who didn't speak to him any more and never have to wonder what the conversations they were having and which stopped as soon as they saw him enter the room were about, had been a relief. He'd still felt horrendously guilty about that relief. Fears, that in moments of objectivity he knew were unfounded, still occasionally crept up on him. Like the worry that if he wasn't out on the beat any more anybody who died or was hurt on what had been his patrol route would still somehow be his fault. Even telling himself that there would be another officer on the route now, that he'd often covered other people routes without feeling they were letting the world down, didn't make him feel any better in those moments.

There were a lot less bad moments now though than there had been. Here with just Tom and no more pressing concerns than finishing the extension for the indoor toilet before the weather turned even nastier those fears seemed distant, at least most of the time. Not that being in love had solved everything. As while in the good times it felt wonderful, like he was finally getting something in his life right, in the bad ones it meant there was yet another person he was letting down.

Today, so far at least, was a good day, Andy decided he went back into the living room.

Tom was sitting at the table reading a letter, a birthday card lying on top of its envelope next to his now cold mug of tea.

"It's your birthday?" Andy said in surprised. Logically he knew that Tom had to have a birthday, everybody did, whether they chose to celebrate it or not, he'd just not realised that it was today.

"Not 'til Monday," Tom said, putting down the letter. "It were just Hal fussing and posting it in plenty of time, either that or he forgot what day it were. Although I reckon Alex must have picked the card, 'cause it don't seem like anything Hal would thought to get."

"This is the Hal who you lived at the hotel with?" Andy asked, realising that although Tom had talked about his past, it had often been in such general terms that he wasn't always sure just when some of the things happened or where Tom had been at the time.

"Yeah." Tom smiled broadly. "He's a hotel manager now. Not the old one we live in neither. The Barry Grand. It's right on the sea front too. I worked there for a bit before..." he fidgeted with the edge of the letter, then added quieter, "before I left."

Grand and Barry Island weren't two words that Andy would have put together. Old amusement arcades, tacky kiss me quick hats, pound shops and a popular TV sitcom, yes, but not much else. "It sounds like things are going well for him. He was the one with the..." Andy stopped trying to find something that sounded better than addiction or drug habit, before settling on the rather vague, "the problem."

"Yeah, but he says he ain't touched any since I left," Tom replied proudly. "An' I believe him. He'd said it before an' bin lying, but he were such a knob when he were on it I don't reckon he'd have kept his job if he were." He turned on to the second page of the letter. "And Alex is living there, not got her door yet."

Tom sounded like he'd got mixed feelings about that, so Andy doubted something like 'couldn't she nip down B&Q?' would be the right thing to say. "That's good, isn't it?" he said carefully, wondering if it was some kind of slang term that had gone completely over his head.

"Yeah." Tom still didn't sound totally sure. He looked down at the letter again and then folded it up and put it in his pocket seeming to have decided that what he said had been rather strange. "I mean it's not like a real door or a it's just...well it's hard to explain, it's sort of a special door and I think only she can see it when she finds it. But it's not weird or anything."

"Oh, right," Andy replied, now even less certain about what Tom was talking about. With the little that Tom had told him about the old hotel that him, Hal, Alex, Annie and apparently a load of other people had lived in, plus the fact that they all seemed to have rather a lot of issues going on in their lives, he wondered if it had either been a hostel or even a squat. Whatever it was he was glad to hear that at least some of Tom's friends were getting on well in life, especially after all that Tom had told him about losing friends and having no family beyond his late father. Hoping to turn the conversation back towards something that he had a chance of understanding, Andy said, "So have you got any plans or ideas for what you'd like for your birthday?"

Looking like he really hadn't actually thought about it until the card had reminded him, Tom said, "No,I mean I 'spose a cake or something from the bakery in town and we have a few drinks. I don't mind really. Ain't like it's a big one this year."

"Let me know if you get any ideas," Andy said, doubting that Tom would ask him for any thing. Which meant he really needed to think of something himself and Andy freely admitted he was rubbish at buying presents at the best of times, and four days wasn't long to get anything, especially when he had absolutely no idea what to get for him. They'd only been in a relationship for a few weeks, so he didn't want to go too extravagant or expensive as he knew Tom would be all awkward about it and would feel that he needed to do the same when it came round to his birthday. Electronic gadgets weren't really Tom's thing, he'd still not quite managed to get the hang of texting on the very basic mobile he'd eventually bought and most of the rest he didn't really see a point to. Nor did Tom seem to have any favourite bands or films that he could get DVDs of, and he didn't seem to borrow any books from the library in Rhayader, so beyond the ones that Tom had borrowed of his own he didn't know what he'd really be interested in reading. Clothes were a possibility, not that he liked clothes shopping, he didn't, although clothes didn't seem right as the only present, but a couple of thick jumpers might not be a bad idea given how cold the days were getting.

Taking Tom into Cardiff and letting him have a look round the shopping centres and so that when he saw something that he liked and he could buy it for him was probably the best plan, Andy decided. He could take him out for a meal as well and maybe even meet up with Gwen for a drink. They'd have to go at the weekend though as the last thing he wanted was to run into his mother doing her shopping, which was always done on a Monday. Coming out to her in the middle of a busy shop with half of Cardiff staring at him was a pretty terrifying thought.

Trying not entirely successfully to sound casual about it, Andy said, "I've been meaning to go into Cardiff for a while as there are a few things that I need to get. Do you fancy coming with me? We could make a weekend of it? Go Saturday morning, stay overnight, maybe go out for a meal, come back on Sunday."

"Saturday?" Tom said, not sounding remotely enthusiastic about the idea. "I can't, I've got a load of carvings to finish, and I said I'd help out on the Mrs Griffiths from the craft shop on the market selling stuff."

"It's only a couple of hours drive," Andy said, hoping that Tom would agree to a compromise. "We could go after the market has finished. It's done by four, isn't it? I could come into Rhayader and pick you up. We could drive down to Cardiff, find somewhere to stay and get an early start on Sunday."

"Nah, it's not really my thing," Tom replied, turning away. "Anyway, I'd better get a start on these." He pointed to a box of pieces of wood cut into rough rectangles. "I said I've have some house number things done. You should go though, if we need the stuff. I reckon it'll get right hard to get out of this place once the weather get bad."

"Well if you're sure," Andy said disappointed, but not wanting to push it. Especially not as since Tom had politely, but firmly told him the day after they'd started to sleep together that he didn't want to be paid for working on the farm any more and the sale of the wood carvings had become Tom's only source of income. Not that there was anything he needed to pay for as Andy paid all the bills and bought the shopping, but having the money and independence to buy anything else he needed was a good thing as far as Andy was concerned and he wasn't going to do anything to threaten it.

Perhaps having a day apart might even do them some good. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, not that he wanted there to be much of an absence. There had only been a couple of nights since they'd begun their relationship when they'd not spent the night in the same bed. Both times Tom had been restless for a couple of days before hand and had as evening approached said he was going out for a walk and that walking in the dark cleared his head. He'd worried about him, but both times in the morning Tom had been back at the house when he'd woken up, looking happier than he'd done the previous evening. Walking around in the cold and dark wasn't his own idea of fun or calming, but it seemed to work for Tom so he went along with it. Not wanting Tom to think that he was too disappointed, Andy added, "I should probably call in on my mam, let her know how things are going."

"Does she live in Cardiff then?"

Andy nodded. "Yes, and so does David."

"Who's David?" Tom asked, putting the box down on the table.

Andy sat down on the sofa, wondering why he'd not told Tom anything about his family until now. "He's my oldest brother,"

"You've got brothers and sisters?" Tom asked, caught somewhere between sad and envious.

"Just brothers," Andy replied. It had been a long time since he'd seen them, and even longer since they'd all been together. Between all their jobs it had made it difficult to find a time when they all were in the same county, never mind all in Cardiff. "There's three of them and they're all a fair bit older than me, David will be fifty next year. Then there's James, he's out on HMS Montrose at the moment, and there's Simon who lives over in Cowbridge. I don't really see them that much any more. Never really were that close I guess."

"Oh, right," Tom said, not sounding like he really understood why. "Well I guess I'll meet them all one day, won't I?"

That was a whole conversation that he didn't want to get into right now, so Andy just nodded and said, "Of course."

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Tom gave him a happy smile and turned back to his carvings.

It could work, Andy told himself as he leant back on the sofa and closed his eyes. He'd have to tell his family about Tom eventually. He wanted Tom in his life and he could hardly hide him and their relationship from them forever, so he'd have to tell them the truth. That while he'd dated women, there had been men too and now that he'd found Tom he couldn't imagine being with anyone else. He loved him, nothing was going to change that, so they would just have to get used to the idea.

It was far easier said that done though, especially given what he knew his mother's feeling to be on the matter. Although she was contrary enough about some issues that knowing for certain exactly how she'd react was an impossibility. The fact that Christmas was just six weeks away did give him one idea on how to start getting them used to the idea. He knew his mum would have the inevitable questions about what he was doing to for Christmas and although part of him wanted to tell her that he'd made plans, taking Tom with him and letting her see what a nice person he was was probably a better idea.

Better for who? He thought guiltily. Because that plan would mean lying to her and making Tom complicit in that lie. Yet what was the alternative? Tell her with Tom there and risk him being on the end of the kind of insults and truly hurtful things that he knew she was capable of saying? No, he do it later once he was home and safe on the farm with Tom then he phone her. Even that idea twisted uncomfortably in his chest. Perhaps it would be better if he wrote her a letter, he told himself, he could get down on paper what he had to say clearly and he'd get it in the post before he could talk himself out of doing it. But then there would be the wait to find out if she was still talking to him, would she write back? Or phone him? Or would she just blank him from then on. What about his brothers? Should he tell them first or wait and risk them finding it out from his mother? He didn't want them to think that he didn't want to tell them. Maybe he should write the letter out for each of them and post them all at the same time. But then what if the postman lost one of them? Then whoever didn't get once would think they were being snubbed by him. What about James? If he was still on a tour of duty should he post his first, to make sure it got to him at the same time. How much earlier would he need to make it?

Andy opened his eyes, trying to find something to distract himself with. He wasn't going to think about it, because otherwise he'd get himself in such as state that Tom would notice and then what? Tell him that he'd kept their relationship a secret from everybody he knew so far? Risk Tom thinking he was ashamed of him when nothing could be further from the truth?

He looked at Tom was now marking up the wooden blanks for house name and number plates ready for carving. Kind, understanding, unbelievably nice Tom, who'd been through so much, but still cared so much about everybody and everything and made his life better just by being in it. For him, Andy decided he could do anything, and if that meant risking his relationship with his family then he was, for the first time in his life ready to risk it.

TBC aiming for Wednesday 16, if not Sunday 20th at latest.

* * *

Notes:

Notes.  
With regards to Andy's depression/anxiety in this fic I wanted to say that this isn't going to be one of those 'love cures all' fics or the ones where depression is portrayed as something that is 100% permanent and that once you've become depressed there is absolutely no way out of it other than a life time of medication – they are opposite ends of a spectrum with a myriad of variations in between. So for the purposes of this story Andy still has problems, primarily with anxiety, but he's working on coping strategies and he is starting to get on with living his life again. Information used albeit briefly in this part about situational versus clinical depression and the one in four statistic is taken from a variety of mental health organisations websites.

This is now going AU for Hal and Alex in Being Human portion of the story, as their stories are going back in Barry Island without Tom there, and as such the whole Captain Hatch storyline would have failed to have happened, as it needed all three of them to be there. What actually happens instead I've yet to decided as it doesn't immediately impact on this story as yet.

Also apologies for the lateness of this, I'd wrote a load of it and then realised that Tom already knew about Andy's mum and had to rewrite some of this.


	20. Chapter 20

The farmers market had tailed off around half past two and Tom felt more than a little guilty about having given Andy that as an excuse as to why he couldn't go with him to Cardiff. The truth though, that in about four an a half hours time he'd be decidedly hairy and running across the moorland chasing sheep and rabbits, really hadn't been an option.

It was rotten timing for a full moon, Tom thought as he walked back through Rhayader. Although he was glad that he hadn't been on his birthday, that really would have been rubbish. He'd tell Andy soon, he told himself, he'd just get Christmas out of the way first, as with next full moon after tonight being just a couple of weeks before it didn't seem fair to spring it on him then. Before the January full moon though, before the weather got really, really bad he tell him, he definitely do it then.

There was a definite autumnal feel now, the cool, damp air scented with wood smoke, newly ploughed fields, mouldering leaves and fungi. The sounds had changed too, bird song was muted now and the animals that would sleep the winter away were scurrying about trying to eat enough to see them through hibernation, while those that didn't were hoarding nuts and berries.

The unmistakable stink of vampire mingling with the smells of autumn was startling and Tom stopped and looked around. The scent was faint and if the full moon hadn't been just a few hours away Tom was sure he would have missed it. Strange and familiar at the same time it was definitely the same unidentified vampire's scent that he'd come across back on his first visit into Rhayader months earlier. He'd not detected even a trace of vampire since that day and Tom regretted the fact that he no longer carried a stake tucked inside his coat as routine – it had seemed unnecessary and would have raised questions from Andy that he was in no way ready to answer.

He looked at his watch. There was plenty of time to check out the trail and get out to somewhere remote to transform. If he did run into the vampire he would give them a choice, leave Rhayader, never come back and tell its friends that no vampire would ever be welcome there or if they weren't inclined to take the warning then he could improving a stake and that would be that. Either way, Rhayader would be vampire free.

Rhayader on a damp November afternoon was nearly deserted once you got away from the three main shopping streets and Tom had little trouble following the trail to the same pub car park that it had ended in before. This time the car park wasn't deserted. Parked on the far side of it was a works van, building trade by the things piled into the back of it, the two seats in the front were unoccupied and Tom turned his attention to the other vehicle.

Parked by the wall that ran at the edge of the car park, spotting potentially pissed patrons from wandering down and falling into the river Wye, was a vintage Triumph motorbike. Sitting on the wall next to it, dressed in equally vintage looking biker leathers was a woman. Smoking a cigarette and talking on a mobile phone, her long blonde hair, blowing in the wind, she was doing a very good impression of alluring bad girl. All Tom could see though was vampire.

Noticing him, she quickly ended her phone call and then, sticking her fingers in her mouth she whistled to him. When Tom didn't move, she clicked her fingers instead. "Here boy. I thought dogs had good hearing."

"I can hear yer," Tom said walking over to her. "I can smell yer an' all."

"Really?" She took a drag on her cigarette, then leaning towards him, blew the smoke in his face. "Because all I smell is wet dog." She wrinkled her nose. "And it's disgusting."

"You ain't wanted here," Tom said, knowing that she was trying to get a reaction out of him. You get angry, you get careless, his dad had warned him. You're better than them, he'd said, all of them. Never forget it.

"You think the people here would want you around if they knew what you are?" She flicked ash at him. "They are nothing but sheep, cattle, and you know what creatures like that think of wolves, don't you?"

It was too close to his own fears for comfort and Tom glared at her, defiant hoping that she wouldn't realise. Never let a vampire into your head. That had been another of his dad's pieces of advice, along with things like 'be nice, polite and always have the material to make a bomb.' Part of him wanted to just call her a bad name, but his dad hadn't like that, especially not about ladies, even vampire ones. So he decided to try and stare her down. "You lot only call us wolves when you know you've lost the argument. 'cause if you'd said dogs like you normally do then I could've said that people like dogs, even sheep like sheep dogs. So I know you ain't right."

She laughed, mocking more than amused. "You've got a lot to say for yourself, haven't you?" Getting down from the wall she moved to stand uncomfortably close to him. "Are you trying to impress me? Is that it? Is the little puppy dog lonely?"

Tom stepped back. "My dad warned me about people like you."

"What women who know their own mind?"

"No." Tom took another step back. "Vampires. You'll do anything to get your own way. So I'll tell yer, I ain't interested, and even if you weren't a blood sucking vampire, I've got a boyfriend, so you're right out of luck."

She stared at him for a moment and then started laughing. "Brings a whole new meaning to doggy style. Honestly though pup, I wouldn't do you if you were the last creature on Earth." She smiled showing fangs this time. "We all play a look. You pretend to be this little helpless puppy dog, all big eyes and baggy clothes, but I know that you could break my neck and stake me without feeling the tiniest bit of guilt." She took another drag on her cigarette, the white paper burning down to near the orange filter end. "I give sad, pathetic guys the woman of their wet little fantasies for one night. And if they don't like the price..."She shrugged. "Well I've never had one that complained."

Tom looked at the tree overhanging the edge of the car park. He was fairly sure that he could have broken off a branch and staked her before she had time to start the bike and get away. The reappearance of the two men from the works van however prevented that really being an option. The average normal person probably wouldn't stand idly by while a scruffy bloke shoved a lump of tree through a pretty lady or anyone else for that matter.

"I wouldn't try it," she said picking up her crash helmet from where it had been hung on the handlebars of the bike. "You see those apes over there?" She nodded towards where the two men were leant against the side of their van eating chips out greasy paper wrappers. "Best case scenario for you is I knock you on your arse and they laugh at you. At worse, well worse for you any way, they decided I need rescuing, you get the shit kicked out of you. Maybe you end up in hospital. You transform. There'd be bits of doctors and nurse everywhere." Her eyes turned black and she leant in close to him. "Every way this plays out you lose, dog boy, got it?"

She was right, as much as he hated to admit it. "I could've staked you though, you just know that. You where the one who got lucky with them being there, not me. I've killed more vampire than you've killed werewolves, I'll bet you that for nowt."

She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. A moment later she laughed. "A little lost wolf cub in Wales. You're Mad Dog McNair's boy, aren't you?"

"Don't you even say his name!" Tom snapped.

"Yappy little thing, aren't you?" she said putting her crash helmet on. "All I was going to say was I was impressed by him. I saw him fight a couple of times. It must have been twenty years apart. Won both times. Do you know how rare it is for a wolf to live that long?"

"Stop it!" Tom snapped again, his resolve not to stake her and deal with the consequences later slipping. "Just stop it."

"What is it normally? Two or three years from first transformation until..." she drew a finger across her throat. "I never understood how you people could let your whole lives fall apart because of six hours a month. It's pathetic really, when you think about it."

"Do you really want to fight that much?" Tom said taking off his backpack that contained the few carvings that he'd not sold at the market. "'Cause if you do, we can find somewhere and it's only gonna be me leaving the place."

She looked over his shoulder. "It's time I was going. I've got better things to be doing that listen to you yap and whine."

Tom turned to see the two men from the van walking over to them.

She revved the bike's engine. "Maybe I'll see you around some time. See if there's as much fight in the pup as the old dog." Snapping the visor closed, she gave the one more rev of the engine before roaring out of the car park.

"She was way out of your league," said the older of the two men in a heavy Welsh accent, before eating another one of his chips.

"I weren't interested in her like that," Tom said wishing he'd thought to get her name or the number plate of her bike. He have to ask Hal about her, find out if she was mixed up in dog fights as anything more than an avid spectator.

"Didn't look like that to me," the younger of the two workmen said, "Looked like yous were getting right pissed off because she weren't putting out."

"I weren't," Tom said irritably, wanting to get away before he said something stupid. "I told her as much. I've got a boyfriend an'..."

The younger one started laughing then nudged his workmate with his elbow. "It'd bin like a fish with a bicycle that, if she'd said yes. Still mate, leaves more for us normal blokes."

"I'm going home," Tom said picking up his bag, not wanting them to see how much what they had said hurt. "You should just be glad she's gone. She'd have sucked you dry and left yer for dead, an' that would've be if you were lucky."

"She could've sucked me any time." Tom heard the young workman say, followed by his friend laughing and playfully punching on on the arm. "Too right, boyo. Now get them chips down you. That driveway ain't going to pave itself."

Once he was round the corner and out of sight of them, Tom broke into a run, wanting to put as much distance between himself and them as possible.

Out of breath, heart pounding, Tom only stopped once he was on the steeply rising track that lead back up to Cwm Elan Farm. Angry now as much at himself and the men and the vampire, Tom sat down on the low wall that ran along the edge of the narrow road.

He could have... no, should have, he thought angry at his own weakness, he should have called him on them making fun of him and Andy being together. They'd had no right to do that to him or to anyone. Yet the first thing that had come into his head when they had called themselves normal was that he couldn't challenge them, that he had no right to reply that he was – being a werewolf meant he had lost that right a very long time ago.

Tom leant forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands tight to his head, feeling the thick scar that ran across his scalp. The vampire woman, whoever she'd been had been right - all people would see was a monster. It was why she'd also been right about most wolves not living beyond a couple of years from their first transformation. They hit the same spiral that Larry had, that his dad had before he'd come into his life.

It was different for him, Tom told himself. He'd not really had a life before he'd become a werewolf, he had no memory of what he'd lost so it shouldn't matter. He looked up and out at the valley, the misty tree covered slopes, the dismal afternoon blurring as his eyes began to sting.

Closing his eyes, Tom let his other wolf-heightened scenes take over, letting them connect him back to the land. He was part of it, part of the ancient landscape, he wasn't wrong, he was more a part of the place than those would fear him because of what he was. Opening them again, he got up and without a second look back down the valley to Rhayader, Tom continued on his way back to the farm.

The house felt empty without Andy there and Tom paused only to swap his bag from the market with one he'd packed earlier that day with spare clothes and a couple of blankets before leaving again.

Travelling at a slow jog, a compromise between the distance and time to cover it he had available, Tom followed the paths away from the farm, down past the dam at Caban Coch and out to the bleak and empty landscape of the Claerwen valley on the other side of the reservoirs.

There was already frost forming on the ground and he climbed higher onto the slopes above Claerwen, the withered grass crunching in the dark underfoot, while the trickling streams were still, the water turned to ice on the where they once ran down the still hillsides. The world was silent apart from the occasional bleat of a sheep somewhere in the valley below, everything fading to muted greys as the sun dipped below the horizon.

Striping off when temperatures where hovering around zero was never any fun, Tom thought as he shoved his clothes into his bag. He'd hung on as long as he could though, the pain of the transformation combined with the cold would have made his fingers too clumsy and numb to manage zips of buttons if he'd waited much longer. The little hollow in the hills barely gave any protection from the weather, but with the transformation already well underway, there was little more he could do that bear it the best he could. With one of the blankets he'd brought with him spread out on the frozen ground, Tom covered himself with the second, before curling into a ball in an attempt to minimise the pain and cold seeping into every part of him.

The sky had cleared as the temperature had continued to drop and as the bright, silvery light glinted on the frosty ground as the moon, full and bright rose. Under the blanket the wolf stirred, its breath clouds of steam in the chill air. Turning its shaggy head to the moon it howled, then scented the air, ready for the hunt.

* * *

TBC. I'll say Sunday next week (27th) as between a manky sore throat, cough, what's beginning to look like conjunctivitis in my right eye and being stupidly busy at work Wednesday posting probably won't happen - I'll still try though.


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